Though to be honest, David did go and let the Rangers into the town, and they'd killed quite a few Custodians. But you couldn't blame David for that since they'd blackmailed him with Leigh to get him to let them in.
Nanako shifted in the dark and threw an arm over my legs, groaning in her sleep. I continued to caress her head and spoke reassuring words over her to lull her into a deeper sleep.
I reflected on the dream-memory, which was from my missing year. From what Nanako told me, I had woken in that condition every morning for weeks after I'd come out of the coma. Poor Nana-chan, the absolute and utter hell she must have gone through every day when I woke with no memory of her or the wonderful months we'd spent together after we got married.
And things hadn't gotten any easier after that, either, with my father arranging for her to be deported from Newhome, and her subsequent miscarriage and descent into severe depression. But she'd clawed her way back from those setbacks and after two years found a way back to me. And now we were back together.
I still marvelled that she was mine. She was the most courageous, compassionate, and wonderful person I'd met, not to mention the cutest girl I'd ever laid eyes on.
And I'd never ever, for any reason whatsoever, let anything separate us again.
As I began to gently massage her shoulders to help her to slip into a deeper, trouble-free sleep, I echolocated with my voice at an ultrasonic pitch so I could see my surroundings and my other friends.
The store’s interior lit up as bright as day, though in a kind of surreal, almost ghostly manner. I saw that I was leaning against the side of a century old, busted-up fridge, its glass doors smashed and sides dented. We were at the back of the store near grime-encrusted windows, which miraculously were still intact. The shelves, stripped of any products decades ago, were covered with dirt, leaves, and mildew. Plaster panels and air-conditioning ducting had collapsed from the ceiling here and there, and the walls were so filthy I had no idea what colour they used to be.
Leigh lay on the grimy linoleum floor on my left, his breathing shallow and his eyes moving rapidly under his eyelids, deep in REM sleep. David was to my right, sleeping on his back, and Shorty was at my feet, curled into a ball and using his arm as a pillow.
I ceased echolocating and let the darkness swallow me again, as snatches of our discussion last night fled through my mind.
"...so what exactly do you want us to do about the Rangers?" Leigh had asked.
"I wanna get proof that they’re delivering refugees to the Skel to be their slaves in return for the Skel keeping off Hamamachi lands and away from its people," I’d replied.
That'd been Nanako's idea – expose the Ranger's nefarious activities to the Hamamachi Council so that they’d shut 'em down. Doing that would remove the Ranger's influence on the Skel, who'd then soon lose interest in besieging Newhome, and that would set the town free from both adversaries with one stone.
And it was a nice theory, but when I admitted this meant we'd have to go into the heart of Skel territory to obtain the proof, the others were none too pleased.
"You want us to walk into the middle of Skel territory of our own free will?" David had asked.
"We just escaped that hell-hole three weeks ago, and now you want us to go back?" This from Shorty.
"...I know I said I'd join you in exposing the Rangers, but if that's your plan, you can count me out. Sorry," Leigh had said. And I couldn’t blame him, especially considering his poor health – he hadn't fully recovered from being shot three weeks ago.
From there the conversation hadn't gotten any better.
"Even if we do go back to the Skel lands, what's the odds of finding that community centre again? We can't exactly go barging around the whole place trying to find it, not with who knows how many Skel running around," David had protested.
"I know where it is," I'd assured them. "It's in Police Road, in Mulgrave."
That comment, as expected, brought a round of comments.
"How could you possibly know that?" David.
"Yeah, weren’t you, like, running a high fever at the time?" Shorty.
So I explained to them that I’d been there before, two years ago, in fact, when the Ranger squad I had been part of had tried to deliver a load of refugees to the Skel.
I’d joined the Rangers to infiltrate their ranks and find out what they were up to. Someone in Hamamachi, I couldn’t remember who yet, had asked me to do this. I’d tried to stop the handover but a fight had followed in which I’d been forced to take out my squad mates in order to rescue the refugees and get them safely out of Skel territory.
When I’d finished explaining all that, Leigh had popped the million-dollar question that was burning in all their minds. "Ethan, if you knew what the Rangers were up to two years ago, why the blazes didn’t you report them to the Hamamachi council back then? We wouldn’t be in this mess if you’d done the job properly the first time."
"Oh, for goodness sakes, Leigh," Nanako had interrupted angrily at that point, "That's how Ethan got shot. Someone – we don’t know who – shot him to stop him doing exactly that."
"Ohhhh," Leigh had said. "Sorry, mate, I didn't know."
"And that's how you got amnesia and epilepsy," David had concluded. "So this is your second attempt to expose the Rangers?"
"I guess you could say that, yeah."
Then Leigh had 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 middle of Skel territory, where we'll just as likely get killed or caught and turned into slaves. And then, if we get this evidence, we still have the matter of the person who shot you 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," had been 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 as having attempted suicide after that. Lastly, there’s that little problem of the Militia accusing you four of being 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 from out here?" David had asked.
"We’ll have to steal a Smartphone from a Skel," I had answered.
After that, they’d fallen silent for a while, with Leigh grumbling about wanting to change his mind about coming, David staring into space, and Shorty doing intricate drum rolls on a grimy grocery shelf beside him.
I’d 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 foragers from Ballarat on a couple of occasions, so we reckoned that town 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, though, I reckoned that after a couple of weeks of R&R in Ballarat that Leigh, and maybe Shorty, wouldn’t be joining us when the time came to leave.
“Hey, you given much thought to where we're gonna live when this is all over?" Nanako had asked me after the others had fallen asleep.
"What, all of us?"
"No; you and me, ya big ninny."
"Right. Well, Newhome's out, obv
iously."
"Obviously."
"And Hamamachi, well, they may accept us back if we manage to expose the Rangers. What do you reckon – will the Militia will 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, I reckon it would be, though a quiet spot in the country would do just as well," I'd 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'd said dreamily.
"Just you and me."
"And a gaggle of kids."
"Whoa, how many's a gaggle?" I'd asked.
"Two or three."
"That many?"
"Maybe even four."
"You've got it all planned out, eh?" I'd 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'd lamented.
She'd fallen asleep after that.
In fact, all this thinking and reflecting was making me sleepy, and I fell into a shallow sleep again.
I didn't get much sleep, unfortunately, for 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 was forcing 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 suggested 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 wanna 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 said to Shorty as though he was a child. Being fifteen, perhaps he was.
Shorty gave David the bird.
"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 in the background.
"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?"
"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, so we jogged swiftly in that direction, weaving our way along a sidewalk littered with shattered glass, partially collapsed shop front awnings, and even century old, rusty 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 around us. 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 its asphalt surface.
Going by the gunshots, the altercation had to be around the next corner on our right. So after I pulled the guys closer, we crept around the corner and found ourselves in a narrow street lined on both sides with small restaurants, take-away joints and grocery stores. We snuck 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 with four hulking Skel warriors, decked out head-to-foot in suits of bone armour, hot on their tails. I could see the bodies of three Custodians and one Skel sprawled on the road further down the street.
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 closet Skel's chest. These Custodians had no idea how to fight Skel – you have to shoot them in the neck. That's the only place they don't cover with armour. All the same, the Custodian got lucky and one bullet found a weak spot in the armour, and the Skel grunted and collapsed.
The other three Skel, looking more like demonic apparitions than humans in this earl
y-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 swung at 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 Skel with his hands and fists, but one of the Skel 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 where he'd been squatting 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 was spilling all over the road. The glimpses I could see of the Custodian's body as the Skel frantically tried to tear her clothes off confirmed Shorty's declaration – the Custodian was most definitely female.
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 49