Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series)

by Peter R Stone

  In the end, we had to shop at one of the brick-and-mortar stores, where we found exactly what we needed. The only catch was that they were very expensive. I had to spend almost all the money Brandon gave me. We also had to deflect the shopkeeper’s suspicions about why two girls were buying men’s sneakers.

  “For when we are gardening,” I told him.

  Our new shoes hidden in shopping bags, we stopped at one of the outdoor food vendors and bought a nutritious lunch of wholemeal bread, tofu cake, nuts and dried fruits.

  I was putting the plastic take-away container in my bag when a shadow blocked out the sun. I staggered back in alarm, only to relax when I saw who it was.

  “Ah, good afternoon, Mrs Thomas, Chelsea, Karen.” Ryan said. He appeared surprised to see us.

  “Ryan,” my Mother said, clearly uncomfortable.

  Karen nodded shyly in greeting, I met his gaze and raised an eyebrow. I was impressed that he didn’t glance at my birthmark this time.

  “Doing a bit of shopping?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation.

  “That is the reason one comes to the market,” Mother replied. “Now, if you don’t mind, we have much to do.”

  “I can actually see you out here, Chelsea,” he said quickly, before we could move away. “It was pretty dark in the shelter.”

  “Is that a good thing?” I asked. I deliberately ignored Mother, who was glaring at Ryan for having the audacity to speak to a young woman who was not a family member, especially in public.

  He laughed nervously. “Actually, you look like the female version of your brother.”

  “What? Are you saying I look like a boy?”

  “No!” He looked terrified.

  “Then are you saying my brother looks like a girl?”

  “No!”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I, ah...” He ran a hand through his hair, a dozen emotions fleeing across his handsome face.

  I was amused by the sight of this amazing, overly capable guy tongue-tied because of me.

  “It’s pretty obvious you’re twins, that’s all,” he finally managed.

  “Oh, relax, Ryan, I was just messing with you. You’re not the first to point that out.” I rewarded him with a grin. He returned it, clearly relieved.

  “Daughter, that is enough,” Mother said, indicating we should be going.

  Ryan turned to my mother. “My apologies, Mrs. Thomas. Actually, I was hoping to have a word with Brandon. Is he here, somewhere? I really need to ask him something.” He looked quite concerned, so it took a great deal of self-control to refrain from asking him what it was about.

  “He left the shelter early this morning. He did not say where he was going,” Mother said.

  “Right, thanks, Mrs. Thomas. Well, be seeing you all.” He flashed a shy smile in my direction and was gone, lost in the crowd.

  Staring wistfully in Ryan’s direction, I didn’t notice the lady and her daughter until I had almost walked into them.

  “Excuse, me,” the lady said when I made eye contact. “But would you happen to be Brandon Thomas’ twin sister?”

  “Why, yes. Is it really that obvious?” I laughed nervously. Who were these people?

  “I’m afraid so.” She laughed with me and nodded in greeting to my mother and sister. “And I’m sorry, you must be wondering who this strange woman is, accosting you in public like this. I’m Margaret Smith, and this is my daughter, Lucy. I recognised you because your brother was friends with my son, Dan.”

  The penny dropped. This was Dan Smith’s mother! My hands flew to my mouth. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Smith. Brandon mentioned what happened.”

  “How is Brandon coping? It must be hard on all of them,” she said.

  “Nothing compared to what your family must be going through. Please accept our sincerest condolences,” my mother said.

  “Thank you,” Margaret said. “It was such a tragedy, Dan passing away just when he was finally getting his life in order. All thanks to the magistrate's leniency in putting him on probation instead of in prison when he was caught shoplifting a couple of months ago. The weekly visits to the HQ to see his Custodian Probation Officer did him a world of good, too. He stopped listening to his father and me some time ago. ”

  “I’m so sorry.” I felt terrible for their loss, reflecting that foraging really wasn’t the best career choice. What if an accident like that happened to Brandon? I’d be absolutely devastated.

  “Thank you, my dear. Well, we will be off now. Just wanted to say hello and see how Brandon was doing.”

  * * *

  Having spent the better part of the morning at the market, we headed home around lunchtime. When we walked through the shelter’s gates, sudden movement behind the large blue hopper caught my eye. Brandon’s head appeared and he gestured me over before dropping back out of sight.

  “Can you two go on ahead? I’ll be up soon,” I said as I handed my bag to Karen.

  I made my way inconspicuously over to Brandon, aware that several other residents lounged on the lawn. Ducking behind the large bin, I found him sitting cross-legged behind it. He looked a bit better than the last time I saw him. Seemed my lecture about eating better had gotten through.

  “You ready to rejoin the real world yet?” I asked. I grabbed an empty cardboard box beside the bin, folded it flat, and sat on it. I didn’t want to get my dress dirty.

  He shook his head and handed over a large plastic bag. “Just came to give you this.”

  The bag was filled with fresh bread, vegetables, fruit, peanuts and cashews, and three small bottles of soymilk, which we would have to drink today, since we had no fridge. “Thanks. You keep some for yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. You’ve got some more colour in your face today, at least.”

  He smiled weakly.

  I told him about the plan to escape town, and that I wanted him to come with us. I saw hope blossom in his eyes, but it faded away just as quickly. He pumped me for more details, worried we may be making a huge mistake. But after I answered his questions, he seemed satisfied.

  “You going to come?” I asked.

  “Probably, maybe...I don’t know.” He looked troubled rather than crestfallen. Not the reaction I had expected.

  “Hey, instead of trying to work through the emotional trauma created by Dan’s death by yourself, why don’t you go back to work on Monday and tell the boss what you’re going through. You told me once that foragers have free access to Newhome psychologists. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  He looked down and dragged his fingers through the dirt covering the concrete. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “You can’t just keep hiding like this!”

  “You think I don’t know that? My mind is going around in never ending circles trying to find a way out of this. It’s driving me nuts!” he said.

  “A psychologist–”

  “No!”

  “Why do you have to be so stubborn, Brandon?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t!”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Hey, never guess who I bumped into at the market today.” I decided to change the topic.

  “Surprise me.”

  “Dan Smith’s mother.”

  His head snapped up in alarm.

  “She asked how you were coping with Dan’s accident.”

  “Oh.”

  “She’s heartbroken, the poor lady, as you can well imagine. Even more so because Dan turned his life around recently, after being convicted of shoplifting. She said the magistrate’s leniency of putting him on probation instead of in prison, plus his weekly visits to the Probation Officer in the Custodian HQ made a world of difference.”

  Brandon jolted as though he’d been struck and the blood drained from his face. “What did you just say?”

  I said it again.

  Brandon leaped to his feet and paced frantically up and down in the s
mall enclosure behind the bin, running his hands through his hair, his face ashen.

  I stood as well. “What’s going on?”

  “This is a nightmare, Chelz, a nightmare! We thought he was a Custodian informant. We thought he was a Custodian informant!”

  I grabbed him and pulled him around to face me. I realised his whole body was shaking. “What are you talking about, Brandy!”

  “A few weeks ago I spotted Dan going to the Custodian HQ. I feared the worse and told Con. He freaked out and told me to follow Dan every day after work. I found out that he went to the HQ every Tuesday.”

  “So what?” I couldn’t see where he was going with this.

  “So Con and Matt concluded he was a Custodian informer, ratting on our illegal smuggling efforts in return for money.” His shaking intensified. “But from what you’ve just told me, we got it all wrong – he wasn’t an informer, he was on probation! What have we done, Chelz, what have we done?”

  “What exactly did you do?” I was getting a bad feeling about this.

  “Don’t you get it, Chelz? They arranged for him to have an accident. Made a wall fall on him – crushed him to death.” He looked at me, and with tears streaming down his face, resuming his frantic pacing.

  “That was Con, Matt and Jack, right? You weren’t directly involved, where you? No, of course not.” I refused to believe my twin brother could ever be part of such a heinous crime. At the same time, I was deeply shocked to learn the others had killed Dan. That he was innocent of what they suspected him of made it even worse. The poor guy, he trusted them, he thought they were his friends.

  One thing still didn’t make sense. “Why, Brandy – why did they kill him?”

  “Because if he ratted on us, the penalty for smuggling in and selling drugs is the death sentence,” he said without slowing his pace.

  “You guys smuggle drugs into town? Where do you get them from?”

  “We make them.”

  Another piece of the jigsaw puzzle clicked into place. “The drugs are made in the lab, aren’t they? How many foragers are involved in this?”

  “You’ve been to the lab?” He looked extremely alarmed.

  “No. Con’s mentioned it a few times, that’s all.”

  “Chelz, you’ve got to stay away from those guys, promise me! They’ll corrupt you, just like they did me.”

  “No, they won’t. Besides, they always leave me behind to babysit Ryan when they go.”

  “Who’s Ryan?”

  “He’s Dan’s replacement. He’s cool, but...” my voice petered off when I suddenly realised that Con’s insistence he was an informer meant that his life was in deadly peril. I also understood what Con meant when he threatened something would happen to Ryan if he found out about the escape plan. ‘Taking matters into their own hands again’ meant they would murder him like Dan.

  Loud voices nearby startled us. Looking towards the shelter, we spotted the supervisor and one of the cleaners headed for the bin, carrying a dozen bulging black garbage bags.

  “Sorry, gotta go!” Brandon said. He darted over to the closest tree and used it to scale the wooden fence surrounding the property.

  I slipped out behind the bin, astonishing the supervisor and his helper, and rushed back inside. I wanted to have this out with Con right now, so I needed to become my brother again. I figured if I told the others what I just told Brandon, their consciences would be similarly pricked. Maybe they would turn themselves into the Custodians or at the least, resign their jobs. If either of those scenarios came to pass, Ryan would be safe from my murderous teammates.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Con, Matt and Jack were scoffing down soy hotdogs and sipping beers at a table in a darkened corner of the Forager’s Club.

  I slipped onto a vacant stool and studied them in the poor light. It was weird how you thought you knew someone and then found out you didn’t know them at all.

  “Don’t say hello, then.” Con scowled.

  “Hello.”

  “You look like you saw a ghost,” Jack said.

  “Pretty much did. I just bumped into Dan Smith’s mother at the market,” I said, speaking quietly.

  All three of them squirmed on their stools.

  “And?” Con prompted.

  If I wanted to get the result I was after, I had to play my cards right. “Turns out we were wrong about him.”

  “In what way?” Matt asked.

  “He was arrested recently for shoplifting and for some reason the magistrate went easy on him and put him on probation instead of in prison. He had to meet a Custodian probationary officer at the Custodian HQ once a week.”

  Jack sprayed a mouthful of beer on the table and fell off his stool, coughing and spluttering. Matt went an unnatural shade of white. Con just went still.

  “Did you hear what I just said?” I gave Con a taste of his own medicine, starting him down.

  “But you’re the one who told us he went to the Custodian HQ,” Jack said.

  “Not to mention the great lengths you went to in recounting how uncomfortable he looked and kept glancing over his shoulder,” Matt added.

  “Every person alive would have reached the same conclusion we did with that information,” Jack said. He looked to us as he spoke, seeking affirmation for their actions.

  “If the stupid twit told us the truth instead of hiding it, this would not have happened,” Con said.

  “Yeah, that’s right! Dumb jackass brought this on himself.” Jack thumped the table. I looked at him in surprise. This was not the Jack I thought I knew.

  “All comes back to what I said before, doesn’t it lads,” Con said. He spoke slowly, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. “Dishonesty isn’t just telling lies, it’s what we omit to say as well. You getting me, Brandon? This is the penultimate example of what goes wrong when we’re dishonest with each other.”

  “That’s it, Con? That’s your reaction?” I asked him, flabbergasted.

  “Reaction to what?” he snapped.

  “You just found out that you murdered an innocent man, and all you can say is that he should have been more open with us? You’re unbelievable!”

  In a blur of movement, Con was off his stool and in my face, his hands around my throat. “You little punk! Maybe you didn’t push the wall down, but you’re the one who got him to stand under it!”

  Matt and Jack sprang into action, trying to pry Con’s hands off my neck. I was barely aware of it, though, for my world was too busy collapsing. My brother was one of the pillars of my life, an example to me, someone to inspire me and comfort me. But now the pillar lay shattered in ruins.

  My brother was a murderer.

  I realised then that Con, Matt and Jack should be in prison, not planning a breakout. They should not be leading foragers and their families to a life of freedom and safety in Ballarat. For the three of them, it wouldn’t be freedom but escaping justice.

  Another thought occurred to me, sending cold, clammy strands of fear coiling up the back of my neck, and my vision to fade to black. If I didn’t report these guys and my brother to the Custodians, I was an accomplice to murder. That made me almost as bad as them. And it got worse. Although I knew I should report them, I couldn’t do it, because I needed them to co-ordinate and lead the breakout that would get my family out of our nightmare existence. More, I knew the penalty for murder was life imprisonment or execution by lethal injection, and I couldn’t face that happening to my brother.

  “Brandon - Brandon!”

  The darkness that blotted out my vision receded sufficiently for me to realise Jack had managed to prise Con’s hands away from my throat. Matt was struggling to hold him back, who still looked set to kill me.

  I remembered I was supposed to be masquerading as my brother, and wasn’t acting true to his character. He knew he was guilty of murder, and that was why he was in such a mess. He couldn’t reconcile his actions with his conscience. It had never occurred to him that he’d feel so gu
ilty, so condemned, after committing the act.

  Trying to emulate Brandon when he was apologetic, I looked up at Con sheepishly. “Sorry, Con. I don’t know what came over me. I’m just struggling to cope with what Mrs. Smith told me.”

  “Hypocritical little prat!” Con spoke with such animosity that he sprayed spittle all over my face.

  “Go easy on him, Con, he’s just rattled, that’s all. We all are.” Jack said. I looked at him, wanting to appreciate him coming to my defence, but I no longer saw him as cute, adorable Jack, but as Jack the murderer. Oh, how I hated this! Why did I have to bump into Dan’s mother? The weight of this knowledge was too much to bear.

  “I said I’m sorry!”

  “Word’s don’t cut it, boy!”

  Jack turned me around and bundled me towards the door. “Go on, git. Give him some space. He’ll settle down soon, like he always does.”

  I nodded and stumbled for the door, lost, afraid, and wracked with guilt.

  * * *

  I was still lost in a morass of conflicting emotions when I got back to the shelter an hour later.

  Seeing Ryan waiting for me when the elevator’s doors pinged open to the fifth floor didn’t help. The concern on his face just amplified the guilt I felt because I was helping four murderers evade justice by escaping town.

  Ryan pushed off the wall when I shuffled towards him. “You okay, Brandon?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Those guys attack you again? You look terrible.”

  “No. And I told you, I’m fine.”

  “Don’t look fine.”

  “I had a fight with Con.”

  “What about? Not me, I hope.”

  An almost overwhelming urge came over me to tell him everything. Maybe if he were to shoulder this terrible burden with me, it wouldn’t be so heavy. Besides, I was curious to know what advice he would give. Would he tell me to dob them in to the Custodians, or to continue with my plans to escape?

  “No, about something stupid we did a while ago.” I said.

  “Hey, did your sister give you my message?”

  “Haven’t seen her since this morning.” I stared up into his brown eyes, almost melting at the mix of concern and determination shining through them.