by Laura Taylor
Mei-Lien smiled sweetly at him. Dusk had heard the rumour that they’d had rather a fiery argument before the decision had been made to take this trip, and she wondered what had been said. “Would you like me to draw you some pictures?” she offered, false enthusiasm more biting than straight out curses could ever have been.
But Whisper, to his credit, didn’t rise to the bait. “That would be nice. Thanks.” He handed the paper back to her, and she leaned on the side of the ute, sketching diagrams beside the list of objects and chemicals.
“Am I going to be ‘Princess’ for the rest of my life, then?” she asked as she drew.
“Unless someone comes up with something better,” Whisper said, a smirk on his lips. “And soon. These names have a way of sticking.”
“We could call her ‘Doc’,” Stick suggested cheekily as he dashed past. “What’s up, Doc?” With a snort of laughter, he rushed off to collect another crate of supplies to pack into the ute. Smiling at Stick’s antics, Mei-Lien finished her drawings and handed the paper back to Whisper. He folded it and tucked it in his pocket.
Rochelle had been keeping the children occupied while the preparations went on. Neither of them had much experience with cars, and Mikey in particular was fascinated with them. But now was not the time to let him indulge his curiosity, as he’d only get in the way of the men trying to prepare for the journey. But just as the group was almost ready to go, they arrived at the top of the path to say goodbye. Whisper knelt down, opening his arms for a hug. Julia went to him willingly, but Mikey stood back, an odd look of betrayal clouding his face. “You’re going away,” he accused Whisper.
Whisper sighed, stroking Julia’s hair as she cuddled in beside him. “We’re going to have a fight with the bad men,” he explained, as simply as possible. “They have some medicine that we need, and we’re going to go and get it from them.”
“And then you’re going to die and we’re going to starve to death,” Mikey concluded unhappily, his view on the world disturbingly macabre for someone so young.
Whisper hesitated, and with good reason. It was unwise to make promises he might not be able to keep. “No. I’m going to come back,” he said finally, his declaration something of a surprise. “I’m not going to die today.”
Mikey thought about that for a moment, then finally seemed to accept his answer, as he stepped forward, giving Whisper a tight hug around his neck. Whisper handed the children back to Rochelle, then stood up to say goodbye to Willow.
“I’m going to hold you to that,” she told him, taking his hands. “If you don’t come back I’m going to be seriously pissed off.”
Whisper leaned in to kiss her cheek. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, keeping his tone light. “I’ll see you tonight.” He turned and climbed into the back of the first ute, squeezing in beside the rest of the men and the stack of supplies.
Aidan was still going through a checklist to make sure they had everything. “Guns, food, storage boxes,” he called, marking off the items as each one received an affirmative reply. “Med kit?”
“Right here,” one of the men said.
“Water?”
“Got it.”
“Spare fuel? Wet weather gear?” Though they were planning to be back before dark, there were any number of complications that might mean they were delayed, and it was pure foolishness to allow themselves to be caught out in a storm without any kind of shelter. “Spare tyres?”
“Got them, and yes, we pumped them up.”
“We’re good to go,” Aidan announced finally. He turned to Dusk, looking awkward about saying goodbye.
“Stay safe,” she said, coming forward to take hold of his hands, as Willow had done to Whisper. She might not have chosen this marriage, but she was willing to put some effort into it so that at the very least, the two of them could be friends. For the moment, there had been no question of any of the women going on this trip, though Dusk was satisfied it was for purely pragmatic reasons, rather than any misguided sexism. “You’re all tired and run down,” Aidan had said, when she’d raised the hypothetical issue with him. From her brief introduction to the tribe, it seemed that battles with slavers were a regular occurrence, and she’d wanted to know when she would be allowed to join in. “You all need to rest, eat some decent food, put on a bit of muscle and do some training. Ask me again in a month, and we’ll see.”
“Take care of yourself,” Aidan said, stopping short of promising that he’d come back, as Whisper had done. Then, to Dusk’s surprise, he pulled her into a tight hug. Just as quickly, he was pulling back again. “You know the drill,” he told Torrent, who was standing beside Dusk, one of the men who wouldn’t be going on this particular trip. “Stay close to home, rotate the sentries, keep your heads down until we get back.”
Torrent nodded. “Be careful,” he said, all of them aware that that might not be enough to get them home safely. The last of the men climbed into the vehicles, and Dusk noticed Stormbreaker sitting right at the back of the closest one. As she watched, Mei-Lien caught his eye and offered him a timid smile. There had been a lingering tension between the two of them since Stormbreaker had refused the offer to marry her, and Dusk wondered how long it would take for them to sort themselves out. She’d heard a few rumours by now that Stormbreaker had his eye on Rochelle – who was still refusing to go within three feet of a man – but as far as she knew, both Rochelle and Mei-Lien remained oblivious to his interest. Which made it rather difficult for him to explain to her why he’d turned her down.
Once all the men were in, the man nearest the cabin on each ute thumped on the roof, and the cars moved off, the men clinging to the sides as the vehicles rocked about on the uneven dirt road.
Dusk glanced sideways at Torrent, wondering how he was feeling, being left more or less in charge of the tribe while Aidan and Whisper were away… and she caught the tail end of a look of cold anger as his eyes darted sideways to glance at Mei-Lien… and then settled on Stormbreaker’s retreating form.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By mid-afternoon, the sky had clouded over again, keeping the temperature comfortably in the mid-twenties. Still tired, but eager to be doing something useful, the four women had headed out to the orchard to pick fruit. The bulk of the crop was put in the main cabin, eaten fresh by plenty of hungry mouths, but about a fifth of it would be dried and kept for the winter. The tribe had done well setting themselves up, Dusk realised, perusing the range of fruit on offer. They had at least five different varieties of apples, three varieties of pears, peaches, plums, apricots, and a dozen different citrus trees that would provide fresh fruit in the winter months. There was also a passionfruit vine – the fruit already finished for this season – and some grapes, raspberries and blackberries. There were plans to expand that part of the orchard, Torrent had told them, as the few vines they had didn’t produce much fruit when split between fifty people, but something else more urgent had so far always kept them from putting much time or energy into it.
Over at the far end of the field, a small group of men were looking after Mikey and Julia. It had become something of a competition to see who could spend time with them. All the men had marvelled at how well behaved they were, though Willow had drily pointed out that children who weren’t able to keep quiet when they were told to tended to end up either as slaves, or dead. Currently, Julia was sitting in one man’s lap while he read a story to her, while nearby, Mikey had got tired of books and was now the subject of an extremely biased game of touch football. The strategy seemed to be to more or less hand him the ball, make a big show of ‘only just missing’ tagging him as he ran for the try line, followed by a round of cheering as the whole team celebrated the point.
A particularly loud scream from Mikey had Willow pausing, her hand halfway to an apple as she looked over towards the game, but the cry had been one of excitement, not fear, caused by one of the men hoisting Mikey onto his shoulders for a ‘victory lap’.
“What happened to the
ir father?” Dusk asked, hoping the question was neither rude nor intrusive. Getting to know new friends could be plenty difficult when every topic and question risked digging up old trauma.
Willow sighed and paused in her picking. “I’m sorry,” Dusk began to apologise, but Willow shook her head.
“It’s okay. It’s a fair question. Mikey’s father left when he found out I was pregnant. That was before the riots really took hold. I suppose I just have to put that down to poor judgement on my part. Julia… Well, she was born after the world fell apart…”
She trailed off, but then Rochelle filled in the blank, her voice uncharacteristically thin. “I killed the man responsible.”
Dusk gaped at her in shock. It wasn’t the killing that was of concern, but rather… “How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
Bloody hell. Fifteen years old, and she’d taken on a fully-grown man who’d just raped another woman. It was no wonder she was so bitter about the world.
“I love Julia,” Willow said firmly. “With all my heart. Even though her father was…”
“She’s a beautiful girl,” Dusk agreed. She still retained a lot of the innocence that came with being three years old, but at the same time, Dusk had caught the odd glimmer in her eyes of a darker, more worldly wisdom. Hopefully, with a secure place to live and trustworthy people around her, the trauma wouldn’t have too much of a lasting effect, either on her or on Mikey.
Perched in the back of the ute, Aidan held his rifle ready, eyes constantly scanning the surrounding streets. The town wasn’t particularly big – large enough that if luck was on their side, they might not run into any trouble, but small enough that they didn’t want to linger. It had been months, maybe even a year by now since they’d been here, and they had no way of knowing what had happened to the tribe that had claimed this territory in the intervening time. Maybe they’d found more followers and grown larger. Maybe they’d dwindled, food and water hard to come by without a decent river nearby. Or maybe they’d simply packed up and moved on. It was a comforting thought, but not one they could rely on, by any means.
The streets were deserted, and even after five years of knowing the world had ended, Aidan couldn’t get used to the eerie quiet. His little tribe, their forest territory, their insignificant gathering of humanity, seemed infinitely small against the backdrop of these remnants of a juggernaut that had numbered its members in the billions, that had made it possible to contact people on the other side of the world at the touch of a button. He hated coming to town, not so much because of the danger, but because it was a stark reminder of how very alone they were.
The vehicles turned a corner, then slowed to a cautious crawl and crept along the road that led to the town’s single high school. Two men were perched over the roof of the cab, guns trained on the street ahead. More guns were aimed to each side, and in the car behind them, the men at the back of the tray were providing a rear guard. Everyone was on edge, and would remain so until they were far away from here and back in their safe little hideaway in the forest.
Finally, the vehicles pulled up in front of the school. Grass and weeds grew thick around the buildings, a potential hiding place for snakes who would be active and dangerous in the warm weather. The buildings themselves were covered in graffiti, a last farewell from a generation that hadn’t quite figured out it was dying and still thought that vandalism would be a good bit of fun. Aidan objected to the practice, not on any kind of lingering principles of morality or decency, but on simple pragmatic grounds. Windows should be salvaged as building materials, not smashed for entertainment. Looting the hardware shops was fine, but one should take seed packets and garden tools, not cans of paint.
Aidan leapt out of the ute, gun raised, alert to the slightest hint of trouble. Around him, the two dozen men he’d brought did the same, taking up defensive positions around the utes and beside the low brick walls that bordered the school. Once it became apparent that they weren’t going to be interrupted, Aidan cautiously lowered his gun. “Whisper, Stormbreaker, you’re with me. The rest of you, stand your ground until we get back. If we hear gunfire, we’ll abandon the equipment and get back here as fast as possible.” Even as he said it, Aidan cringed. If Mei-Lien was right, then the equipment they’d come to collect could mean plenty of lives saved well into the future. The choice between a few lives now or many lives then was not one easily made, but he had to keep in mind that if they didn’t survive the now, there wouldn’t be a then to save anyway. He picked up two of the boxes from the back of the ute, along with a wad of rags to pack around the glassware, while Whisper did the same. Stormbreaker, on the other hand, simply kept his eyes on the road, gun at the ready, as the three of them made their way cautiously towards the building.
Inside, the hallways were dusty and dank, broken windows having let the rain in, spiders filling the nooks and crannies with their webs. In one room, a colony of bees had set up a hive, enjoying the shelter of the building and a convenient space between two cupboards to build their comb. A lot of the classrooms contained nothing in particular, neat rows of desks facilitating the teaching of maths, English, geography or history equally well. They came to a storage cupboard, a supply of textbooks inside, and Aidan took the time to collect a handful of different subjects and toss them into one of the crates. Julia and Mikey – as well as any other children that came along – were going to need some sort of education sooner or later.
They progressed slowly, each corner, each new corridor a silent threat as unknown horrors waited on the other side. If anyone had seen them arrive, this would be a perfect place for an ambush.
Finally, after a tense search, they found the science labs. Whisper and Aidan set their crates down in the centre of the room, doing a final check of the surrounding area before they let their guard down too much. Nothing suspicious outside the windows. No tell-tale thuds or creaks from down the hall. Satisfied, they turned their attention to the cupboards, while Stormbreaker stood guard.
Whisper pulled out the list Mei-Lien had given him and set it on a table. Each cupboard and drawer had once been neatly labelled, the printed words now faded and peeling, but still legible enough to be useful. They set about taking out the things they needed, wrapping each one in rags and nestling it safely in the crates – there was no point going to all the effort of collecting this stuff if it was just going to get broken on the way home. Mei-Lien had listed a number of chemicals as well, though she’d admitted she didn’t know if the lab would have them, or whether they would have gone off in the years since the school had been abandoned.
Taking some beakers out of a cupboard – a set of five different sizes – Aidan paused to simply stare at them, and to remember what they represented. So many decades of progress, all wiped away in a few short years of violence and chaos. It had been the same the world over, frantic messages sent via text and email, everyone desperate to know how the rest of the world was faring, where might be a safe place to go, which countries had been spared the chaos. But there had been no stopping it. Refugees from one country poured into the next and triggered the next set of riots, the next installation of martial law, the next wave of the collapse. Meanwhile, media commentators and helpless politicians had theorised about the causes, whether it was financial or political or environmental. Was it the price of oil? The overtaxing of electricity grids as the population grew beyond all control? Had they finally pushed the natural environment beyond its limits? As they’d sat and talked, the latest round of droughts and storms had proved too much, even for the colossal collection of intelligence and resources that the common folk simply called ‘civilisation’.
From the other side of the room, Whisper noticed his quiet contemplation. “You really think this is going to work?” he asked, studying the object in his hands, some sort of convoluted glass tube. “Anaesthesia? Surgery? Antibiotics?”
Aidan snorted. “I was a computer programmer, remember?” he reminded Whisper. “I don’t know shit about c
hemistry.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Hey, Willow!” It was Hawk who was shouting, waving from the end of the row of trees. Mikey was perched on his hip, happily tying knots in the man’s dreadlocks. He’d also taken a liking to his tattoos, drawing on his own skin with a blue pen he’d found somewhere until Willow had firmly told him he had enough pictures on his arms now. “Is it okay if we go get the kids a snack? They both say they’re starving.” The last word was said with a grin, both children perpetually complaining they were hungry for the past few days. Concerned about worms, Nicholas had given them both a concoction of pumpkin seeds and chicory intended to kill any parasites, but had confessed that he thought perhaps they were just making up for lost time, their bodies eagerly demanding the nutrition which was now available in order to support necessary but delayed growth. Willow had made sure each of them was eating balanced meals for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but aside from that, they’d been allowed to snack fairly freely in between.
“No problem,” Willow agreed, then added, “They’re not being too much trouble, are they?”
“They’re both little angels!” Hawk insisted. “No problem at all.”
He turned and headed down the hill, the others falling in beside him, Julia perched high on one man’s shoulders. Once they were out of sight, Dusk couldn’t help asking, “You trust them to look after the kids? We’ve only been here a couple of days. I would have thought…”
“You’re not confident you can tell the difference between a good man and a bad one?” Willow asked her astutely. “Since we’ve been here, we’ve been given food, clothing and what medical help they have available, we’ve been free to wander about at will and no one has hit us or raped us. Actions speak louder than words, and as far as I’m concerned, their actions are fairly well screaming at us.”