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

by Peter R Stone

  Shorty tugged on my arm. "Just bring her with us!"

  Conceding the need for haste, I stood and held out my hands to David. "Shorty's right, we gotta take her with us. Give me your bow and quiver. You have to carry her; my chest still hurts too much." David was a good two inches shorter than I and had a leaner build, but the girl was slim, so he could manage.

  David handed his weapons over, peeled the unconscious girl off the road and hefted her over his shoulder with a grunt. "She's heavier than she looks."

  "Good muscle tone," I replied.

  Shorty was already slinking back the way we'd come; an arrow notched to his bowstring. "Let's go already!"

  I slung David's bow and quiver over my shoulder, retrieved my pistol from the road, and then formed the rearguard as we headed back to the Asian grocery store as quickly as David could walk. I wondered what Nanako would say when we rocked up with an unconscious Custodian consultant with us. She hadn't been happy when I told her I'd confided in Consultant Singe, so I didn’t think she'd be particularly pleased about this development.

  I wondered what the girl’s story was. How old was she when the Custodians discovered she could echolocate and removed her from her family? How had she reacted to their attempts to brainwash her into thinking the chancellor and counsellors were wonderful human beings, to be revered and obeyed without question? Or did she sneak around the geneticists’ biological engineering division and discover the horrific secret of what they did to the boy echolocaters they caught? If she was anything like Bhagya Singhe she’d thank us for rescuing her from the Skel and the Custodians. She might even join us in our mission to expose the Rangers.

  By some miracle, we got back to the store without incident. Shorty held open the battered aluminium frame door for us, and we hurried inside.

  "It’s only us," I called out softly to let Nanako and Leigh know we weren’t Skel. You know, just in case she panicked and accidentally shot us.

  Nanako materialised out of the darkened alcove beside the staircase that led upstairs and lowered her bow – which had an arrow fitted, just as I suspected. Leigh stepped out from his hiding spot behind the row of broken refrigerators.

  "Who's that? Is it Sergeant Xiao?" Nanako asked. The dim light made it hard to see, plus with David carrying the girl over his shoulder, Nanako could only see her legs.

  David laid the unconscious girl on the filthy linoleum floor beside the refrigerators. Nanako and Leigh gasped when her head lolled to one side and her blonde hair spilled into view.

  "What the…" Leigh stammered.

  "What's going on, Ethan, who is she? Where'd you find her? Was she alone?" Nanako demanded, eyeing her suspiciously.

  "We found her a couple of streets away. The Skel had taken out the other four Custodians with her and were trying to rape her–"

  "The mongrels were going at her like dogs, so we had to save her. There were five of ‘em, but we took ‘em out just like that!" Shorty added, embellishing his reply with a snap of his fingers.

  I looked at him.

  "Okay, Jones got four, and me and David got the other one."

  "Is she hurt?" Nanako put her weapon on the floor and gingerly explored the girl’s head with experienced hands.

  "Just unconscious from what I can tell. The Skel hit her over the head pretty hard, but she was wearing a helmet, though."

  "How come she's wearing a uniform?" Leigh asked, his eyes glued to her beautiful face.

  Nanako fixed me with a piercing gaze. "She's a Custodian consultant, isn't she?"

  "Yeah."

  "And is she like you?"

  "Yep."

  Nanako concluded her inspection of the girl and rocked back on her haunches. "You know we can’t trust her, right?"

  "Hold on, am I missing something?" Leigh asked, perplexed. "What d'ya mean, is she like Ethan?"

  "Ethan's a mutant. He can see in the dark," Shorty said, smiling broadly just to taunt me.

  "I am not a..."

  Leigh's mouth dropped open. "He can what?"

  "I'm right here," I snarled.

  David placed a hand on Leigh's shoulder, but he shrugged it off angrily. Hurt but undeterred, David answered Leigh's question anyway. "Two decades ago, a Newhome geneticist did illegal experiments on foetuses. As a result, Ethan can hear better than us and see in the dark."

  "Is that true?" Leigh asked.

  "Yes. Now, are you gonna go all funny and say you thought you knew me and stuff?" I demanded, remembering all too well how badly Shorty took it when he found out.

  Leigh shrugged. "Nah, you're still you, I guess. But you could've told me instead of keeping it all hush-hush."

  "Considering the Custodians would have executed me had they found out, I thought it best to keep it secret as long as I could."

  "I’m with you on that score. Keeping secrets certainly can mean the difference between life and death," Leigh said as he looked pointedly at David.

  Overcome by guilt at his lapse of judgement a few weeks ago, which resulted in Leigh’s arrest and the execution of his girlfriend, David went bright red and stepped back, hanging his head down.

  "What are we gonna do about Sleeping Beauty here?" Nanako interrupted us.

  Before I could answer, the girl sucked in a deep breath, arched her back, and her eyes snapped open. She immediately began echolocating, singing out notes at an ultrasonic pitch, just like Bhagya Singhe did.

  She gave us all a quick once over, and before I could even speak, she launched herself at Nanako, who was still squatting beside her. She swept Nanako's legs out from beneath her and then mashed her elbow against her face. Nanako cried out in pain as she collapsed, trying to arrest her fall with one hand while the other went to her nose, which was bleeding furiously.

  I wanted to rush to Nanako, but the girl was between us, so I held up my hands as a sign of peace. "It's okay; you're safe now. We won't hurt you!" I assured her urgently.

  But instead of backing down like I expected, the girl bounded off the floor like a cobra uncoiling and drove her fist and then her knee into Leigh's stomach. The poor guy didn't stand a chance. He dropped soundlessly and clawed at the dirt and detritus on the floor, desperately trying to draw a breath.

  "Hey!" I shouted, angry now. "I said you're safe with us, so cut it out!"

  The girl whirled around and sized me up, her blue eyes ablaze with fury. "Ethan Jones – traitor, terrorist, illegally biologically modified male. Custodian Command has issued a death warrant for your execution, and they have sent me to carry it out."

  Chapter Four

  So much for thinking she’d be appreciative and thank us for saving her from the Skel!

  The girl was a good four inches shorter than I but clearly well trained in combat, with a muscular, well-conditioned body. Still, I reckoned I could get through to her, so I gave it another shot. "You can forget your orders now, consultant. You're not in Newhome anymore and your men are all dead. So stand down. We don’t want to hurt you."

  "I am not a consultant!" She snapped as she rushed me and surprised me by delivering a double roundhouse kick, first to my left knee and then to the side of my head, making me see stars and stagger back. She followed up on her success by executing a jumping kick to my chest. I managed to block it, but the blow was so powerful that it sent me careening into the shelves behind me, the rotting wood splintering and cracking when I collided with it.

  David, who’d been trying to help Leigh regain his breath, jumped to his feet now and charged the girl. He threw his arms around her and tried to restrain her with a bear hug, but she backfisted him in the groin and elbowed him in the stomach. Then she whirled around in his arms and propelled him head-first into one of the fridges. The broken glass in the fridge door shattered and David slid to the floor with blood flowing from lacerations to his face and hands.

  Having regained my balance, I delivered a front kick that should have sent her flying, but she sidestepped and used a lower block to deflect my leg, and then stepped i
n and kicked me in the ribs.

  I fell back with waves of pain radiating through my chest and tripped over a tube of ducting that lay on the floor behind me. As I struggled to regain my feet, Shorty attacked her, using his bow as a club. But a jumping back kick from the girl and he was on the floor, writhing in pain. She tried to stamp her boot down on Shorty’s throat with murderous intent, but Nanako, who was quite a frightening sight with her face and hands covered with her own blood, was back on her feet, and she deflected the girl’s strike just in time.

  Thrown off balance, the Custodian righted herself and attacked Nanako with a series of kicks aimed at her head. Nanako did her best to dodge or block the blows and even snapped out a couple of kicks herself. But in the end, the girl landed a kick on Nanako’s forehead, and she stumbled backwards and collapsed, shaking her head in an attempt to remain conscious.

  Having regained my feet, I rushed forward again, desperate to stop her from inflicting any more injuries on Nanako and my friends. I stepped over David and Shorty’s prone forms, and tried to punch the girl in the back of the head. She heard me coming and twirled around to face me while executing the perfect crescent kick, which blocked my punch and spun me off centre as well. She followed this up with a foot to my midriff, sending pain spiralling up to my chest wound again, causing me to stagger back.

  I wondered what fighting style she learned. Nanako and I had studied karate while in Hamamachi, but the girl’s fighting style was remarkably different, as she used her feet almost exclusively.

  I concluded that we weren’t gonna overpower her with might alone, so I quickly drew my pistol and aimed it at her. "Stop or I’ll shoot!" I shouted.

  Instead of surrendering to me like I had hoped, the girl snapped a roundhouse to my hand. The impact sent the gun flying from my fingers to hit the shelves beside me and fall to the floor.

  "Ethan!" Nanako called out as she valiantly pulled herself to her feet yet again. "Her fighting's pure text-book!"

  Textbook? I glanced at Nanako, wondering what she meant, and then I had it. The girl had no street smarts. Perfect technique, yes, but no experience. This was probably her first fight held in anger.

  Fine, time to stop playing her at her own game and fight dirty. I grabbed a handful of dirt from the shelf beside me, and then as she stepped in to attack me again, I shrieked the loudest ultrasonic shout I could manage right at her. She staggered to a stop, her eyes bulging as she lifted her hands to cover her ears, whereupon I promptly cast the dirt into her eyes.

  Coming forward, I snapped a roundhouse against a pressure point on her right thigh, robbing her leg of its strength and causing her to stumble. Next I stamped my shoe onto her left instep, and then after grabbing her by the shoulders, drove my knee into her ribs once, twice, three times. Thoroughly winded, she buckled over into my arms, so I drew back my right fist and smacked it into the back of her head behind her ear.

  The girl crumpled face first to the floor, out cold.

  The silence that followed the sudden cessation of such frantic combat seemed completely out of place.

  "Shoot me dead!" Shorty exclaimed from where he sat on the floor nursing his bruised and battered torso.

  "You okay, Nana-chan?" I asked as I used flash sonar to check on her condition, and on that of my friends.

  "It's not broken," she said between sniffs. She was sitting on the floor, breathing heavily while wiping her bloody nose with the back of her hand. An ugly bruise was developing where she'd been kicked on the forehead. My heart went out to her, and I wanted to check on her more closely, but I had to look in on the others first.

  "I’m okay too, thanks for asking," Shorty piped up.

  Leigh, I saw, had retreated to the farthest corner near the window where he sat with his arms cradling his stomach. He didn't look happy at all. "Should 'ave stayed in Newhome," he grumbled.

  David was still lying beside the fridge, and though the cuts to his hands and forehead looked ugly, it was a cut on his chin that caught my attention. It looked pretty deep and was bleeding freely.

  I knelt beside him and pressed my handkerchief against the wound, a temporary measure at best.

  "David's chin's bleeding pretty bad, Nana-chan," I called out. She'd received first-aid training during her time with the Hamamachi Militia.

  With a groan, she picked herself off the floor, retrieved my backpack and dug around in it, largely by feel since it was so dark. Finally, she produced a flashlight and the small first-aid kit I'd brought from our flat.

  "Let me see," she said and shone the light on the wound when I removed the handkerchief. "It looks pretty deep. Needs stitches."

  "I figured as much, but not much we can do about that here."

  "I know," she agreed as she searched through the first aid kit and pulled out a couple of butterfly bandages. "These'll have to do, but it's gonna scar."

  "It'll make a great trophy wound, then," Shorty said snidely while running his fingers over his broken nose, quoting my own words back at me.

  "You aren't ever gonna let that slide, are you?"

  "Nope," Shorty agreed with a laugh.

  Returning my attention to David, I moved aside and held the torch so Nanako could first clean the cut with a sterile wipe and then apply the butterfly bandages. When she was done and the blood had stopped flowing, she applied bandaids to several of his other lacerations.

  "This is your fault – you know that, don't you?" she asked me while she worked with deft fingers. "You shouldn't have brought her back." She spoke without anger, but she may as well have been shouting the accusation.

  "But I thought she'd appreciate us saving her from the Skel," I protested. I wondered if I should mention that Shorty was the first to suggest bringing her back.

  "Seriously, Ethan, sometimes you are so naive it scares me," she said as she finished working on David and packed away the first-aid kit. She tapped me on the forehead. "You gotta think more before you act, okay?"

  "What are you saying – that we should’ve let the Skel have their way with her?" I shot back testily.

  "I'm not saying that at all. But you of all people should have known how dangerous she was."

  "So what should we have done then?" I was annoyed by her attitude, yet at the same time, seeing her covered in blood, and David unconscious and covered in bloody cuts, left me feeling both guilty and apologetic.

  "You could have rescued her and then left her somewhere safe."

  I could see her point, but I didn't want to concede it. The girl was one of my kind, and I would have done anything to save her, since there probably weren't many of us left, thanks to the Custodians euthanizing all the male echolocaters they caught. And with the exception of myself, that was probably all of them.

  "Speaking of her, shouldn't we restrain her or something before she wakes up?" Shorty asked fearfully.

  "How about a bullet through her head instead?" Leigh suggested.

  "Leigh!" was my retort.

  "She almost killed us all, Jones!"

  "I know!" I snapped back, "And I'm sorry, but she's as much a victim as we are. She was taken from her family as a young child and brainwashed into becoming a tool for the chancellors."

  "My heart bleeds for the little cow," Leigh mocked.

  After frowning at Leigh, a gesture he wouldn't have seen in the poor light, I knelt beside the girl. I unlaced her boots and used the laces to tie her hands behind her back and her ankles together. Not that I thought this was necessary. She'd probably be out for some time.

  That done, I went to Nanako and examined the bruise on her forehead and her bloody nose.

  "Will I live?" she asked.

  "I think so."

  David moaned, rolled over onto his side, and then pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked like death warmed up, and was clearly in a lot of pain, from his groin, stomach, and all the cuts.

  "You okay, mate?" I asked. Top marks for the stupidest question I'd asked anyone this year – which, admittedly, wa
s only eight days old. That gave me 357 days to come up with something stupider.

  "Oh, yeah, fantastic. Is she dead?" he asked when he noticed the Custodian girl lying face down on the floor beside the empty shelves.

  "Jones knocked her out," Shorty answered, coming over to sit beside David.

  "Took you damn long enough," he grumbled. "Told you not to bring her back with us."

  Nanako flashed me an 'I told you so' look.

  "In hindsight, we should have tied her up first," I said.

  "Now you think of it," Shorty quipped.

  "So what do we do now?" David asked as his fingers strayed to examine the bloody cut beneath his chin.

  Nanako caught his hand and shook her head, her dark-pink bangs shaking from side to side. "No, don't touch. It's just stopped bleeding and you don't wanna go sticking dirty fingers on it anyways."

  David nodded and dropped his hand. "Well, Jones, what now?"

  "We need to leave the area," I replied. "Every Skel in the vicinity must have heard that gun battle and will no doubt come running to see who won, and when they find their buddies dead, they' re not gonna be happy."

  "You want us to go on walkabout after we've just had the daylights beaten out of us?" David asked.

  "It's all right for Jones. The cow barely touched him," Leigh said.

  "Not true!" I protested, running my fingers over the ribs she'd punched. They weren't broken, but there was gonna be one peach of a bruise.

  Leigh used the wall to pull himself to his feet. "I'm all for leaving now. The further we get away from Newhome the better."

  "What about Sleeping Beauty?" Shorty asked while staring at her longingly – lustfully, perhaps was a better word.

  "We leave her here, of course," Nanako said as she clambered to her feet too, sending a meaningful glance in my direction.

  "But..." I began.

  "She had her chance, and she fluffed it," she declared adamantly.

  Chapter Five

  "Can't we at least untie her when we go?" I asked, realising I'd lost the right to choose the girl's fate.