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

by Peter R Stone

  "I guess you could say that, yeah."

  Then Leigh nicely summed up our predicament. "Man, this whole affair's looking rosier by the minute. At first, you said we just had to spy on the Rangers. Now you want us to walk – of our own free will – into the heart of Skel territory, where we'll just as likely get killed or caught and turned into slaves. And then, if we do manage to get this evidence, we still have the matter of the person who shot you the last time you tried to present the evidence. What's to say they won't try to stop you again?"

  "We’ll just have to keep our wits about us," was my lame answer.

  "Here’s another thought," Leigh had continued, "Since you're an eye witness to what the Rangers are doing, why don’t we just sneak into Hamamachi and you tell the council what you know? That way, we don’t need to go into Skel territory or spy on the Rangers."

  "Not gonna work," Nanako had said.

  "Why not?"

  "Firstly, because of Ethan’s amnesia. His memories of that event are sketchy at best, and they won’t stand up under cross-examination. Secondly, he wouldn’t be considered an impartial witness, since he took out his own Ranger teammates and was framed for attempting suicide after that. Lastly, there’s that little problem of the Militia’s accusation that you four are terrorists. So the only way this is going to work is if we present the council with irrefutable photographic evidence of the Ranger’s arrangement with the Skel."

  "Photographic? Where we gonna get a camera out here?" David had asked.

  "We’ll have to steal a Smartphone from a Skel," I answered.

  I tried to send our thoughts in a more positive direction by discussing where we could go to rest and recover before setting off on our mission. There weren’t many inhabited towns left in Victoria. Not that we’d heard of anyway, but while foraging we’d bumped into other foragers from Ballarat on a couple of occasions, so we figured it would make a good R&R stop. Besides, we were all keen to check out Sovereign Hill, a restored gold-rush-town-come-museum. The Ballarat foragers told us that people even lived in it again. To be honest, I reckoned that after a couple of weeks in Ballarat, Leigh, and maybe Shorty, wouldn’t be joining us when the time came to leave.

  “Hey Ethan, you given much thought to where we're gonna live when this is all over?" Nanako asked after the others had fallen asleep.

  "What, all of us?"

  "No, doofus. You and me."

  "Right. Well, Newhome's out, obviously."

  "Obviously."

  "And Hamamachi, well, they may accept us back if we manage to expose the Rangers. What do you think? Will the Militia drop the ridiculous terrorist charges they slapped on me and the boys?"

  "They can be pretty stubborn, and who knows how the Militia and public will react if we expose the Rangers. They may hail us as heroes, or they may see us as an embarrassment for exposing their dirty underbelly," Nanako had mused thoughtfully. "What about somewhere like Ballarat? Would that be a good place to raise a family?"

  "Yeah, it should be, though a quiet spot in the country would do just as well," I replied.

  "'Country' as in where?"

  "Somewhere far away from the Skel; so maybe much further east along the coast of Victoria, or even over near South Australia. Somewhere secluded, with a small bay or inlet where we can go fishing," I'd suggested.

  "Sounds cosy. I could go for a life like that," she said dreamily.

  "Just you and me."

  "And a gaggle of kids."

  "Woah, how many's a gaggle?" I asked.

  "Two or three."

  "That many?"

  "Maybe even four."

  "You've got it all planned out, eh?" I laughed as I tried to imagine four miniature versions of me and Nanako bolting around our little house in the country.

  "You better believe it. But first we gotta get through this hurdle, you know, exposing the Rangers and all."

  "Don't remind me," I lamented.

  She'd fallen asleep after that.

  My thoughts continued to wander until I fell into a shallow sleep again. I didn't get much, though. I was startled awake by the sound of gunfire at dawn. If I listened carefully, I could distinguish between Custodian Austeyr assault rifles and old-fashioned Skel bolt-action rifles.

  This couldn't be good.

  Chapter Two

  Muted light forced its way into the derelict grocery store through the grungy back window. I shook Nanako gently awake and called to the others. "Hey guys, wake up, something's goin' down."

  David, already awake, was listening to the gunfire with concern. "It’s Skel, isn’t it?"

  "Yep."

  "But who are they shooting at?" Shorty asked.

  "Custodians, from the sounds of it."

  Nanako clambered to her feet and brushed the dirt and dust off her clothes, her face a mask of worry. "Custodians, out here? But why?"

  David’s quick brown eyes met mine. "Looking for us, no doubt."

  "Then we gotta get out of here!" Leigh said, eyes wide with fear as he grabbed his backpack and shouldered it.

  "What if it’s Sergeant Xiao or Captain Smithson, come to join us?" I asked as visions passed through my mind of our friends braving the ruins in an attempt to join us, only to be ambushed and slaughtered by Skel.

  "Why would they come out now instead of joining us yesterday?" David asked.

  "I dunno, maybe they got sprung and they’ve had to flee Newhome too?"

  "So what do we do?" Nanako asked, sharing my concern.

  "I’ll pop out and do a quick reconnoitre…"

  "A recon-what?" Shorty asked.

  "A reconnoitre," I replied.

  "I've no idea what that means," Shorty replied.

  "Ethan want to investigate source of gun shots," David explained as though he were a child. At seventeen, perhaps he was.

  Shorty flipped him off.

  "I’ll be fine. They won’t even see me, I promise," I said as I turned to leave.

  Nanako grabbed her bow and quiver of arrows. "Then I’m coming with you."

  "You’re still too weak…" I protested, turning back to her. I looked at her and considered her determined expression, but I couldn't help but notice how thin and gaunt she'd become thanks to her recent ordeal. My heart ached for her, for all she’d been through, and I wished I’d been able to carry that load instead of her.

  "You can’t talk," she shot back.

  "Why don’t we all go?" David suggested as he took up his weapons.

  Leigh backed away. "Don’t look at me. If you’re gonna go off on some fool scouting trip, I’ll stay behind, thank you."

  "I wasn't going to ask you, Leigh," I assured him, and then turned back to Nanako. I wanted to let her come, but she so wasn't up to it and I knew it. "Seriously, Nana-chan, just wait here with Leigh, please? I'll take David and Shorty and we'll be back in a jiffy."

  She glanced at Leigh and then me. "How many times do we have to have this argument, Ethan? Every time you go off on some mission you try to leave me behind."

  "And on a normal day, I'd let you come, but you were too weak to run yesterday, and you're not any better today, are you? What if the Skel spot us and we have to make a mad dash to lose them?"

  "That's not fair!"

  "Not fair, perhaps, but true. Besides, I need you to look after Leigh. Can you do this for me, please?"

  "Don’t need no babysitting," Leigh piped up.

  "Fine!" she hissed angrily. "I'll stay, but don't go doing nothin' stupid. Have a peek to see if it's Smithson or Xiao, and if it's not, hightail it back here. You got me?"

  "I got you." I turned to David and Shorty. "Right, let's go."

  I made my way quickly and quietly to the front of the store with my two fellow foragers in tow. We exited the building cautiously and stepped into the chill air of an early dawn accompanied by an overcast sky with dark, foreboding clouds. Now that we were outside, it was apparent the sounds of gunfire were coming from the northeast. We jogged swiftly in that direction, weaving o
ur way along a sidewalk littered with shattered glass, partially collapsed shop front awnings, and rusting rubbish bins fixed to the ground.

  My senses were on full alert, so I echolocated as we went, allowing me to see inside the darkened interiors of the stores and restaurants we passed. Well, the closer ones, anyway.

  After passing a derelict bank and a looted pharmacy, we rushed around the corner into a side street dominated from one side to the other by one massive tree. We ran beneath the tree, past an eerily vacant car park on our left that had shrubs and wild grass sprouting freely from the cracks in the asphalt surface.

  Going by the gunshots, the altercation had to be around the next corner on our right. I pulled the guys closer and we crept around the corner to find ourselves in a narrow street. It was lined on both sides with small restaurants, take-away joints and grocery stores. We crept over to a rusted-out car abandoned on the side of the road, and while I readied my pistol, David and Shorty drew arrows and fitted them to bowstrings.

  From here, we had a commanding view of the street, and it wasn't long before we saw two Custodians, neither of whom I recognised, fleeing down the road directly towards us. Four hulking Skel warriors in suits of bone armour were hot on their tails. I could see the bodies of three Custodians and one Skel sprawled further up the road.

  The larger of the two Custodians running towards us suddenly turned and fired his assault rifle on full auto at the closest of their pursuers, but the bullets merely ricocheted off the Skel's resin-hardened bone armour. The Skel reached him a moment later, and with a swipe of his rusting metal club, smashed his assault rifle aside. The next two Skel grabbed the Custodians arms, and the fourth placed the muzzle of his aged bolt-action rifle against the man's head and pulled the trigger.

  The Custodian convulsed once and his body dropped to the cracked asphalt road. Meanwhile, the last Custodian ceased his flight, turned, and unloaded his pistol's entire clip into the chest of the closet Skel. These Custodians had no idea how to fight Skel – you had to shoot them in the neck. That was the only place they didn’t conceal with armour. All the same, the Custodian got lucky and one bullet found a weak spot in the armour and the Skel collapsed.

  The other three Skel, looking more like demonic apparitions than humans in this early-morning light, rushed to attack the last Custodian, who admittedly, was the smallest and slimmest one I'd seen.

  "They're not Captain Smithson or Sergeant Xiao, so let’s get out of here before they spot us," Shorty whispered fiercely.

  He was right, and I knew it, but I was transfixed by a morbid fascination to see this thing play out to the end. I watched the Custodian duck a club swinging for his head with amazing agility, after which he turned and darted down the street towards us. I kinda hoped he could escape, but I knew he was out here looking for us, so there was no way we were going to risk our hides trying to save him.

  The Custodian was easily outrunning his pursuers, but his escape attempt fell flat when two more Skel suddenly burst out of a florist shop to cut off his escape. The Custodian tried to fend off the brutes with his hands and fists, but one hewed his club against the Custodian's helmet, and he collapsed like a rag doll.

  And then, to my astonishment, the five Skel went into a mad frenzy as they tried to tear the Custodians clothes off.

  "What the blazes are they doing?" David demanded.

  "What the...the Custodian's a girl!" Shorty said, standing from his hiding spot behind the car, his mouth hanging open in shock.

  "Get down you idiot!" David hissed as he reached up and tried to pull him back behind the car.

  But Shorty was right. The Skel had pulled the Custodian's helmet off, and long blonde hair spilled all over the road. The glimpses I could see of her body as the Skel frantically tried to tear off her clothes confirmed Shorty's declaration. The Custodian was most definitely female.

  My mind went into overdrive as I considered all the ramifications of this fact. Firstly, the only females in Custodian service were special agents, consultants, spies, and like me, illegally biologically engineered echolocaters. And that meant she was one of my kind. Family, in effect.

  Without further thought, I was out from behind the car and sprinting towards the Skel and the girl in a flash. "We have to save her!" I shouted back to David and Shorty as I ran.

  Chapter Three

  The guys called me back, but I ignored them and continued my mad dash for the Skel, who had just about wrestled the girl's clothes all the way off. They were temporarily slowed by her boot laces. But I was close enough to shoot now, so I slowed to a jog and opened fire.

  I shot the two Skel with their backs to me first, putting a bullet through their necks. They dropped like stones, their hardened bone armour clattering noisily as it hit the asphalt road. The other three let go of the girl, grabbed their weapons, and sprang into action. The one with the rifle tried to draw a bead on me, and in doing so, covered his throat with his arms. I unloaded half my magazine into his armoured arms and shoulders, causing him to flinch and expose his neck. One more shot and it was lights out for him.

  Unfortunately, that allowed the other two Skel to get dangerously close. One aimed a swing of his club at me just as I fired, causing my shot to go wide. The second Skel tried to take my head off with his rusted metal club, and I only just managed to duck beneath it as I scooted backwards, tripping on a crack in the asphalt road and falling unceremoniously on my butt.

  I aimed and fired frantically. Once. Twice. The closest Skel fell – but right on top of me, pinning me to the ground. My pistol was also knocked from my hand and sent it clattering away across the road. The last Skel let fly a string of expletives that would have made a Custodian blush and moved in to finish me off. However, before he could, an arrow swished through the air and hit him in the chest.

  Enraged even further, the Skel turned towards the new threat, and upon spotting David and Shorty, screamed more obscenities and charged them. They loosed arrow after arrow at the Skel until looking like a pincushion, he finally came crashing down.

  "Took your time!" I snapped as I crawled out gagging and retching from beneath the dead Skel – his fetid odour was beyond comprehension. Why didn't Skel wash?

  "You're most welcome," Shorty chuckled as he rushed over to help me to my feet.

  I immediately hurried to the unconscious, half-naked Custodian consultant lying on the ground. By the looks of her, she couldn't have been a day older than me. I gave her a quick going over with echolocation and my enhanced hearing, and ascertained that her breathing and heartbeat were normal. It looked like they'd only knocked her out.

  I knelt beside her and tried not to notice her, ah, assets, for want of a better word, and pulled her shirt and jacket down and then tried to tug her pants back up over her hips. But trying to dress someone when they're unconscious was a lot harder than you might think.

  I glanced back at the lads to ask them to give me a hand, only to see them standing and gawking at her with their mouths open.

  "What, you never seen a girl before?" I snapped.

  "Not like her, no," Shorty practically drooled.

  David blinked rapidly and somehow managed to tear his eyes from her to glance at me.

  I guess with a society that segregated males and females to the degree that Newhome did, their reaction was to be expected. If I wasn't married, maybe I'd have reacted the same way. Still, we didn't have time for this nonsense. "Snap out of it and help me out here!"

  David came to his senses first and we had the girl's pants back on in a jiffy.

  "Is she okay?" he asked.

  "Just unconscious, from what I can tell," I replied.

  "How come she's wearing a Custodian uniform? What's going on?" Shorty asked, confused.

  "She's one of a select group of girls who serve the Custodians as consultants," I explained. The only reason I knew this was because I'd met a Custodian consultant once before. Her name was Bhagya Singhe. Due to her ability to detect if someone was lying w
ith one hundred percent accuracy, the Custodian colonel who interviewed me when we got back from Hamamachi had brought her along. Gave me the fright of my life too, when she started using flash sonar on me.

  "But what is she – what were they – doing out here?" Shorty asked as he looked around at the slain Custodians while he quickly plucked the arrows out of the barbarians they'd taken down. Our arrows were too valuable to leave behind.

  "Trying to sneak through the Skel siege lines and go to another town for help, perhaps?" David suggested.

  I shook my head. "Nah, not their style. You were right the first time. They were looking for us."

  "Surely even they'd have known that'd be like looking for a needle in a haystack?" Shorty said.

  I indicated the unconscious Custodian consultant. "Not with her helping them – she's one of my kind."

  "An echolocater?" David asked, eyes wide.

  "Yeah."

  "She's a mutant?" Shorty gaped, stepping back as though she was contagious or something.

  "We're not mutants!" I snapped.

  "You could sure fool me!"

  "Cut it out, you two," David said. "The question is, what do we do with her?"

  I looked around, searching and listening for signs of any additional Skel in the area, because more would be out here. It was just a matter of time before they came to investigate the shooting.

  "We should drop her off outside Newhome's gates," I suggested thoughtfully.

  "And if Delta Company's not on watch? They'll either drill us full of holes or rush out and arrest us," David said.

  "I ain't going nowhere near Newhome," Shorty declared, his eyes fixated on the girl’s face. She was pure Aussie, as Anglo-Saxon as we came, complete with freckles running from one cheek to the other. "So we gotta take her with us. And quickly, before any more of them blighters come."

  "Take her with us? She’s a Custodian – let’s just stick her in one of these buildings and hightail it out of here!" David argued.

  "But we just saved her life, surely that's gotta mean something to her when she comes to," I said.