I normally couldn't sleep during daylight, but I hadn't slept almost at all in the past twenty-four hours, so sleep came eventually.
The nightmare began with a faceless Custodian hunting me relentlessly through the eerily empty aisles of the Recycling Works storage rooms. It didn't matter if I ran or hid, he always found me, bringing his assault-rifle around to bear on me, ready to shoot. And although it was dark and I could see him with flash sonar, he tracked me with uncanny accuracy.
The dream changed into seemingly random components of things I'd never seen, conjured by my subconscious mind or perhaps even memories from my missing year. I dreamt of a steel works, its staff quaking with fear as they knelt on the floor while masked gunmen - my Ranger squad and I - threatened them.
I saw a large green truck in a very familiar street whose buildings were little more than rubble. I dreamt of a Ranger sergeant - my commanding officer - standing beside that same truck and I watched, horrified, as I gunned him down without mercy. The repugnant, skull-adorned head of a Skel warrior loomed before me while humanoid shapes flitted between us with disjointed steps. Another Ranger - one of my squad mates and a close friend - stood near the truck's back and I shot him dead too. The nightmare lurched and twisted, and I saw a third Ranger, a young woman, staring at me with her mouth open wide - in shock or was it in anger - as I held the fourth Ranger in our squad, who was gagging and choking, upright by his collar. And while Skel and the humanoid shapes swam in and out of focus around me, I shot that female Ranger as well.
With a cry of heart wrenching anguish I tore myself awake and sat upright, panting for breath. I was drenched with sweat and my heart was racing. Sunlight still poured through the drawn curtains.
Nanako woke instantly, sat up, and put her arms around me. "What is it, Ethan? What's wrong?"
"I shot them!" I wailed forlornly as I turned to her.
"Shot who? What are you talking about?"
"It was me - I'm the one who shot them," I said as the images from the dream continued to align with the memory fragments from the seizures, accusing me with a finality that could not be denied.
"Who, Ethan, who did you shoot?"
"The other members of my Ranger squad - I'm the one who shot them."
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Nanako took my trembling hands in hers and shook her head vigorously. "It was just a bad dream, a nightmare."
"No, it wasn't. The memories that have accompanied the seizures I've been having lately were glimpses of the same scenes I just saw in the dream," I explained in near panic as guilt and condemnation threatened to completely crush me beneath their combined weight. I felt so wretched.
"Seizures you've been having lately? You didn't tell me you've been having more seizures," Nanako said, frightened.
"Because they didn't make any sense, they just confused me. But now I understand them. My Ranger squad was not ambushed by Skel - I killed them."
"No, Ethan, you can't have!"
"When the Skel captured us two weeks ago and took us to their territory, the place looked strangely familiar but I couldn't work out why. Now I know why - I've been there before. That was where I shot my teammates. And it confirms what Sergeant Tamura said, that they found their bodies in the same street in which he rescued us two weeks ago."
"But that's Skel territory. Ethan, you know you can't trust dreams - how do you know it wasn't Skel who killed your team?"
I jumped off the bed and paced up and down with my hands clenching and unclenching as the horror of the truth continued to seep in deeper. "There were Skel there too, for I saw glimpses of them in the dream, but it most definitely wasn't the Skel I was shooting at."
"Ethan..."
"Wait, there's more," I said, lowering my head in shame. "I've had another memory - a dream - as well, one I've been denying, even to myself. My Ranger squad and I surrounded what was supposed to be a raiding party encroaching upon Hamamachi lands. But they were refugees, I was sure of it. They had taken refuge in an old farm and had set three armed sentries, one of which was a teenage girl. The sergeant told me to shoot the girl."
Nanako was looking at me intently, her eyes wide with disbelief. "But you didn't, right??"
"I...I don't know. I woke at that point, but a memory that accompanied one of my seizures was of the Rangers and me standing around the girl. She was lying on the road and had been shot several times. She was dead."
"Then one of the others must have shot her, you'd never do something like that!" she stated heatedly.
"Don't you get it?" I said as self-hatred rose up to consume me like a cancerous growth that could not be stymied. "The Rangers are rotten, corrupt, and murderers. And I was one of them. I was a bad person, Nanako. Along with them I stole, I probably murdered that girl, and then finally, I killed them. I'm a murderer."
Nanako leaped off the bed and caught me, forcing me to stand still. "You're misinterpreting the memories and leaping to the wrong conclusions, I know you are!"
"You can't possibly know that!" I snapped.
"Yes, I can, and do you know how I know?"
"No, how?" I asked, though I knew there was nothing she could say to change my mind.
She reached up, took my face in her hands, and forced me to meet her gaze. "Would you steal something now?"
"No."
"If you were in that same situation with the refugees right here and now, would you shoot that girl?"
I glared at her. "No."
"What if Captain Smithson told you to shoot her, would you?"
"No."
"Then you can't have done those things back then either, and I know this because you haven't changed. You are the same good, honest, and upright person today that you were back then. When I look into your eyes I see your heart, and it hasn't changed."
"Even if I was to believe you, then how does my shooting my own Ranger team fit into it?" I asked. The logic of her argument was getting through to me - maybe she was right, maybe I was leaping to the wrong conclusions.
"If - and I mean if - you are understanding your dream correctly and you really did kill your own Ranger teammates, then there must have been a justifiable reason," she said.
"What justifiable reason could there be to kill my own teammates - my own friends?" I asked.
"You killed a Ranger today," she pointed out quietly. "He saved our lives two weeks ago and he used to be your friend. Yet you killed him today. Why?"
"I didn't want to kill him - it was in self defence!" I protested.
"There you go, there's a justifiable reason," she said.
I looked into her loving, concerned face, and I wondered if she could be right. And then I remembered the conclusion I had come to when we got back from the mission to eliminate the sniper. I concluded that trying to take the Rangers prisoner was a mistake that had nearly cost me my wife and two best friends. I had underestimated how dangerous the Rangers were, and vowed to never make that mistake again. I decided that if I ever came up against the Rangers again, I'd shoot them on sight.
So was Nanako right, could the reason I shot my teammates two years ago be justified? Was it in self defence? Was it to stop them doing something? But if so, what could it have been?
"I'm getting through to you, aren't I?" Nanako said.
"You may be right," I conceded, "The memories I have of that day are only pieces of a much greater whole. I guess I need to wait until I have the rest of the pieces before I go passing judgement on myself. But it's so hard. Now I know what I did, I feel so guilty."
"Ethan, your perspective in all this is distorted. Until the entire truth of what happened that day is revealed, I want you to look at yourself through my eyes, to view yourself the way I see you: you were the same back then as you are now, a man of integrity, upright, and honest. I trust you and believe in you. You must not view yourself through your fearful eyes of doubt. Okay?"
Comforted and relieved by her words, I took her into my arms. "Thanks, Nana-chan, that helps a lot. And you know what, I ha
ve no idea how I managed to get through the past two years without you."
"It wasn't easy on me either," she said, snuggling into my embrace.
The evening news declared that the sniper threat was over. The market, shops, and all industries would re-open tomorrow as usual. The Custodians were praised for their dedication to maintaining peace and safety for Newhome and its inhabitants by eliminating the sniper threat.
The Custodians? Humph!
* * *
I woke early the next morning troubled and afflicted with guilt as distorted memories of me shooting the Rangers sprang immediately to mind.
But then I remembered what Nanako told me last night, and so I spent the next ten minutes reminding myself of her perspective and practised seeing myself through her eyes.
When the feelings of guilt had mostly faded away, I got up, ducked outside, and picked a bunch of red geraniums from a tree that had grown somewhat out of control.
When I got back to the flat with the flowers hidden behind my back, Nanako was preparing a simple breakfast with what little food my mother had given us last night. But something about her looked off.
"You’re, um, not having second thoughts about what you told me last night, are you?" I asked, wondering if that was the cause of her disquiet.
"No, of course not," she declared as she touched my wrist gently to reassure me, though I could tell that something was haunting her.
I pulled out the geraniums from behind my back. "For you."
"Well, now you've gone and done it," she said as she accepted the flowers with a weak smile. "There goes my plans for this morning."
"You could just put them in a vase without arranging them," I suggested, wondering what was worrying her.
"The flowers are calling to me."
"Can we at least have breakfast first?"
She glanced from the flowers and then to me. "Why don’t you eat now and I’ll eat later."
I raised my eyebrows and stared at her with a smirk on my face, refusing to budge.
"Okay, breakfast first," she said as she popped them reluctantly in a vase of water.
"You'll be off to the market today?" I asked.
"Yeah, though I'll probably have to get your mother to do all the buying if they still won't serve me."
"I dunno, I reckon once they see all your bruises they’ll trip over themselves to serve you."
That quip brought a weak laugh.
* * *
I was to meet up with Captain Smithson at Custodian Command at seven in the morning, but I got there twenty minutes early to change into my uniform. Plus, I didn’t think the Custodians would turn a blind eye if I was five minutes late every day like when I was a forager.
The captain, who'd been in the officer’s lounge, threw down another swig of coffee and led me outside to the barrack’s fenced-in training yard. There were about twenty men waiting for us, including Sergeant Xiao, Private Kirkwood, and many other faces I recognised - these men were what was left of Delta Company.
I realised immediately that the men were no longer looking down at me, and with the exception of Private Kirkwood, looked at me with considerable respect.
"We have been given a new assignment by Custodian Command," the captain said, raising his voice so all those assembled could hear. "Our company is to infiltrate and drive off or eliminate the Skel besieging Newhome."
Almost all of the Custodians present began to protest, their expressions ranging from alarm to being utterly petrified.
"As you were!" Sergeant Xiao bellowed, and all fell silent. The sergeant sure had a strong voice for a guy with such a slender build.
"To prepare us for this assignment, Sergeant Jones will be training us in stealth and anti-Skel techniques," the captain concluded.
"I will?" I whispered to myself, astonished by this surprising yet extremely sensible Custodian order. If the Custodians had an anti-Skel specialist unit like the Hamamachi Rangers, it could turn the tables in Newhome’s favour at long last.
"Sergeant Jones, they’re all yours," the captain said. "We’ve got one week."
I raised my eyebrows at that, but conceded it was doable, though I think the men would be cursing me before the week was up. "Thank you, sir," I replied, and then got to work.
I needed to raise the men’s overall level of fitness, teach them stealth techniques, how to spot Skel booby traps and ambushes, how to infiltrate the Skel lines and attack them in the rear, and how to fight Skel.
And I had one week in which to do it.
Chapter Thirty
After I'd pushed the men for over ten hours, the captain called it a day and dismissed them. For the most part they weren't the fastest learners in the world, but they were getting there. The captain and Sergeant Xiao showed the most promise.
After they'd gone off to shower and go home, I stood with the captain in the empty training yard, its collection of wooden, rope and tyre obstacle courses no longer the centre of activity.
"Custodian Command is going to give you a Medal of Gallantry for your achievement in taking out the Ranger sniper," the captain said as he massaged his aching muscles. "But I'm guessing that won't mean squat to you, will it?"
"No, it won't" I said, eyeing him thoughtfully. This Captain Smithson was a most atypical Custodian.
"There's even talk of allowing you and your wife to move into North End."
I looked at him sharply at that comment - we could move to North End? The very place I'd spent my life trying to stay out of by downplaying my abilities. Well, I guess I kind of blew it this week.
And if we did move into North End, the horrible persecution would most likely cease, for surely North End was beyond Sienna's reach.
That brought a smile to my face, for if Nanako and I moved to North End, it would be tantamount to a slap in Sienna's face, since the only reason she wanted to marry me was so that I could get us - her - into North End. How ironic it was being offered to Nanako and me now.
"Thanks, but no thanks," I replied. "My family lives out here, as do my friends, so this is where I will stay."
"Is there anything that you do want, then?" he asked.
I pulled four pieces of paper from my pocket and handed them to him.
"Fines?" he asked in surprise as he examined them. They were the fines Major Harris had given us.
"My only request, sir," I said, "Is for these to be cancelled."
Captain Smithson shuffled through the fines, his generally impassive features replaced by a mask of curiosity. "Something I should know about these, Jones? They add up to over two thousand dollars."
"Our flat was trashed, sir, and I mean completely. But when he responded to the incident, Major Harris decided it was the result of us hosting a wild party and hence issued those fines."
"What was the major doing investigating a routine matter like this? He’s a major for goodness sake - this is way beneath his station."
"I think he's got it in for me," I said.
"There’s something fishy going on here," the captain said as he folded the fines and slipped them into his breast pocket. "But don't worry, I will get them annulled."
"Thank you, sir," I said, relieved. It would have taken us months to pay the fines back. As it was, we still didn't have a fridge.
* * *
I showered at the barracks, dressed in my civvies, and was in the process of putting my runners back on when I discovered a note stuffed into one of them.
meet me in the janitors office
I had no idea who the note could be from, and for all I knew, it could be a trap. I stood there, staring at it for a couple of minutes, wondering what to do, but curiosity won out in the end.
I headed down to the janitor’s office, which was more like a storeroom with a desk stuffed in one corner. The room was filled with brooms, mops, vacuum cleaners, and bottles containing a variety of disinfectants and floor cleaners.
A slim teenage boy of Indian heritage was leaning over the desk, trying to repair a mop
whose mechanism had jammed. He wore filthy overalls and a cap that partially covered his face.
"Got my note I see," he said as he looked up. As I studied his face, which was devoid of emotion, I realised he reminded me very much of Consultant Singhe.
"Did anyone see you come here?" he asked.
"No," I said, frowning, for he didn't just remind me of the consultant, he had her monotone voice, her nose, even her tight mouth. And then I had it. He wasn’t a boy at all. "Nice disguise, Consultant Singhe."
"No fooling you, it seems," she replied.
"Nope." I grinned. "Why are you here?"
"I work here covertly twice a week to spy on the Custodians for the Council." She hesitated a moment, and added, "And don't call me consultant, my name's Bhagya."
"Okay, will do. And ah, may I ask you a question, Bhagya?" As this was the first and possibly only chance I'd ever get to speak to Bhagya Singhe alone, I figured this was my best chance to ask her something that had been lurking at the back of my mind for some time.
"Go ahead."
"Are the chancellor, councillors, and senior Custodian officers all Korean?"
"That’s correct," she said.
"Are they also the descendants of those who came in the sub a hundreds ago?"
She nodded. "Also correct. The submarine came from the United Democratic Republic of Korea. We all exist for them, you know."
"What do you mean?" I asked, puzzled.
"The people of Newhome," she explained. "The Koreans from the sub established this town a hundred years ago, populating it with locals who survived the bomb. But they didn’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts, they did to get an instant workforce and army, two things they needed to have to survive in a ruined city full of hostiles when they numbered less than sixty."
"But why establish the town here, why not out in the country like the Japanese?" I queried.
"Only the south-eastern suburbs had been bombed, so by establishing their town here, they could raid the hospitals and universities in Melbourne for equipment and the knowledge they’d need to train up the geneticists and scientists they required to prosper. Not to mention that Melbourne’s ruins have a virtually inexhaustible supply of recyclables."
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 42