Twice more he swung his fearsome weapon at me; both times I dodged, only just managing to get the timing right while looking for a hole in his defences. Cussing with words that made me blush, he swung the club at my midriff. This time I jumped into the blow, using a two-hand block against the haft of his weapon and his wrist, robbing the attack of its momentum. However, before I pressed the attack, the Skel head-butted me with his skull helmet, sending excruciating pain lancing through the side of my head. I staggered back, tripping over the curb and falling unceremoniously onto my back.
The Skel came at me again, eyes alight with glee as he brought the club down, expecting to finish me off. I rolled to the side just before the blow hit home and scrambled to my knees. Seeing the club swinging towards my head, I dove forward and did a tuck-roll, coming out directly behind him. Without hesitation, I plunged the ten-inch kitchen knife into the back of the Skel’s knee, severing tendons and muscles. The brute bellowed in agony as he fought to remain standing on a leg that could no longer support his weight. I remembered from past experience that such a wound would not put a Skel out of the fight but send him into a terrifying rage. So taking advantage of his lack of mobility, I redirected his closest arm away and slashed his throat with the knife. He teetered unsteadily for a moment but then hit the concrete sidewalk like a felled tree.
The second Skel had watched with bored indifference as I fought his comrade, but now he was all action. He shoved his captive aside, lowered his head, and gripping his baseball bat in both hands, charged me like a bull.
Once again, I had to dodge left and right to avoid the Skel’s skilful blows as he sought to strike me down. A task made harder by the throbbing pain in my head thanks to the first fiend head-butting me.
“Stand still, boy!” the Skel snarled.
“Who are you calling a boy?” I snapped as I tore off Brandon’s sports cap and threw it at him.
Revealing that I was a girl was a calculated risk. I hoped it would momentarily stun the Skel and give me an opportunity to attack him. Unfortunately, it had the opposite effect. He just laughed, a disgusting, guttural sound that I found quite unnerving, and then came at me again, swinging his bat with deadly intent. I was a tad slow in dodging one of the blows – it clipped my shoulder and sent me tumbling to the ground.
I was in trouble, and I knew it, but help came from a most unexpected quarter. Armed with the first Skel’s club, Mehmet set upon my opponent, hammering away at his armour like a man possessed.
The Skel turned his attention to this new threat. With three powerful blows of his bat, he sent the boy’s nail-studded club spinning into the bushes beside the road. And before the lad even knew what had happened, the bat rose and fell again, a blow that would have taken his head off had he not had the presence of mind to lift his arm in defence. I heard the bones in Mehmet’s arm break when the bat made contact. The lad screamed and collapsed, holding his arm to his chest. Not satisfied to leave it there, the Skel lifted the bat again.
Frantic to save my friend from certain demise, I quickly regained my feet. Taking advantage of the Skel’s limited field of vision thanks to his helmet, I ducked around behind him and jumped onto his back. Wrapping my legs around his armoured waist and my left arm around his helmet, I pulled back his head and I slit his exposed throat. I quickly leaped off as the Skel collapsed with a gurgling scream.
I breathed a great sigh of relief. I could hear sounds of fighting elsewhere, but we were out of immediate danger. I wanted to go to Mehmet, but figured I needed to get the two women somewhere safe first. They were standing together beside the apartment block’s front door. The older one, her brown hair a tangled mess, stood protectively in front of the younger one.
Gesturing them closer, I pointed to the side of the building. “Quickly, go hide in the Laundromat or anywhere they won’t look.”
They nodded and hurried toward the laundry.
“You gonna live?” I asked Mehmet after they were safely out of sight. He was cradling his left arm while sweat poured down his face, which was so pale it was like a sheet of paper.
He was watching me, wild eyed, as though viewing something he couldn’t quite comprehend.
“Mehmet!”
“Who are you? What are you?” he said.
“What?”
“You killed them, both of them – you’re so fast it’s like you’re not even human!”
“I think that’s the general idea, now quickly, show me your arm.”
“It’s broken,” he said, wincing as he lifted it towards me.
“No kidding.” I let rip with echolocation, since it allowed me to function as a living ultrasound machine at close range. “It’s broken in three places, but I’m pretty sure it’s not fatal.”
“How reassuring. Wait, how could you possibly know that?”
“Remember how I can hear better than normal?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, that’s only part of it. Now come on, we have to find Bhagya,” I said. “And quickly, we’re running out of time.”
Leaving Mehmet to follow me the best he could, I moved cautiously around the corner of the apartment block and slipped into the adjacent street, which led straight to North End’s external gates. Gates that were now warped and hanging off their shattered hinges. The Bushmaster armoured vehicle the Skel used to smash down the gates was just inside the ruined gates, its front end badly dented and windscreen shattered.
Glancing through the gates into the concrete no-man’s wasteland that surrounded the town, I was surprised to see a line of trucks parked in single file. All were ancient, decrepit looking vehicles, missing windscreens, headlights, and in some cases, even roofs. It occurred to me that these vehicles belonged to the Skel, and that meant the barbarians were far more mobile and organised than we thought. I was beginning to understand how they were able to ambush our foraging teams so easily that fateful morning. The only thing we didn’t know was how they knew where our teams were.
Snapping out of my reverie, I studied the immediate area, which was illuminated by streetlights, the floodlights mounted on the wall, and those in the guard tower beside the gates. The guard tower’s windows had been shot out and its door was smashed in. Two dead Custodians were slumped half outside the windows, while another five were sprawled before the gates, some with bullet wounds and the rest so full of Skel arrows they looked like pin cushions.
Another man, a civilian judging by his clothes, lay slumped across the concrete curb with a bullet hole in his forehead. My hand flew to my mouth when I realised it was Jazza, and remembered Stefan telling me the Rangers shot him when he refused to take them to the lab. So he grew a conscience at the last moment.
There were five Skel standing on guard beside the Bushmaster, bone armour glistening in the lamplight and weapons held at the ready.
“Bhagya’s there,” Mehmet whispered, pointing to a tree in the row of gumtrees that lined the edge of the road. Although practically in front of us, I had missed her because she was crouching down behind the tree with her head on her knees.
“Stay here,” I said to Mehmet, and then taking care to keep the tree between the Skel sentinels at the gate and myself, I crept over to Bhagya.
Her head snapped in my direction as I approached, her eyes wide with apprehension.
“They lied!” she whispered when I crouched beside her.
“Who lied?” I asked softly.
“The Rangers! They’re in league with the Skel! And they’re not going after the chancellor and councillors like the Patriot asked them to. Like they promised us they would.”
“They’re going for the Genetics Laboratory, aren’t they.”
She nodded, a forlorn, hopeless gesture. “I watched the whole thing from here. The Rangers tried to make Jazza take them to the lab, but he refused, insisting they attack the chancellery. So they shot him, just like that.”
“And then what happened?”
“Stefan ran away, but Carver was too slow. He said
he’d take them to the lab the moment they pointed a gun at him. I should have thought more carefully about what I told them!”
Fear blossomed in the depths of my stomach. “What did you tell the Rangers, Bhagya?”
Silence.
I grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “Bhagya!”
“Everything,” she murmured.
Chapter Thirty-One
“Everything about what, Bhagya?”
“The Patriot asked me to prepare an information pack for the foragers to give to the Rangers, something that would motivate them to help us. I included information on the Custodians, on the chancellor and his crimes, and on the genetic engineering going on at the lab.”
I gripped her shoulders. “You idiot! They’ve gone to the lab to find out what the geneticists are doing. What if they accidentally release the virus? What if they take it with them to weaponize and use against Newhome?”
“I didn’t tell them about the virus!”
“You didn’t have to. I have no doubt they’ll learn about it if they can get to the top floor.”
“What have I done?” She looked frantic, desperate.
“Are you going to take responsibility for your actions and help me stop them?” I asked.
She grabbed my wrist, her grip surprisingly strong. “How?”
“We can work that out when we get there. Now come on!”
We crept over to where Mehmet was waiting for us. He looked even worse than before, with a green tinge to his complexion now.
“Mehmet?” she whispered in confusion.
“Stefan tried to rape me, but Mehmet knocked him out and we came straight here.”
Her eyes just about popped out of her head.
“Yeah, you got in bed with the wrong people, didn’t you?” I growled, and then turned to Mehmet. “Thanks for your help, mate, I owe you big time. Now go find some hole to hide in and then get yourself to hospital when this is all over.”
“But–”
“I mean it, Mehmet.”
“Fine.” He growled as he spoke, but I could tell he was mightily relieved.
As Mehmet disappeared into the night, Bhagya and I ran as quickly as caution would allow, using only back streets where possible. Sporadic gunfire, explosions and screams of pain sounded from adjacent streets where Skel and Custodians continued to fight it out.
Rounding a corner, we reached the Genetics Laboratory at last, the one-way reflective glass windows looking even more ominous in the darkness of the early morning hours. The bodies of five Custodians and one civilian lay on the ground near the lab’s main entrance, each shot dead by precise weapon’s fire. That sent tendrils of fear shooting up the back of my neck – only Rangers could have done that.
A bomb had blown in the lab’s front door, shattering dozens of adjacent glass panels as well. That meant we should have been able to see into the foyer, except that it was fairly dark inside, which was odd, since it was normally brilliantly lit.
“The lab’s running on its backup generators,” Bhagya whispered, pointing to the ceiling lights, which were extremely dim.
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“It means the Rangers cut the mains.” She looked at me. “Shall we go?”
I shook my head, frantically scanning the area surrounding the lab. “Something’s wrong. Surely the Rangers wouldn’t attack the lab without leaving a rearguard to watch their line of retreat?”
“Maybe, but hey, look – Custodians!” Bhagya whispered, pointing farther up the street.
Walking cautiously along the sidewalk on the other side of the road, six Custodians approached the lab in single file. Weapons held at the ready, they glanced about nervously as they went. Singing out with echolocation, my heart leaped for joy when I saw that Ryan was leading the squad. If we could join forces with them, we would have a much better chance of defeating the Rangers when we stormed the lab.
I detached from the building corner and was about to call out to them when I noticed a number of filthy, dirt-stained tarpaulins dumped haphazardly on the road just meters back from Ryan and his squad. My heart skipped a beat when I realised they were blundering right into a Skel ambush!
“Look out – the tarpaulins – it’s Skel!” I screamed at the top of my voice as I sprinted towards them. The Custodians heard me yelling, but from this distance and with the sounds of nearby gunfire, couldn’t differentiate my words. Some even pointing their guns at me, thinking I meant to attack them.
Recognising my slim form and no doubt the flash of strawberry-blonde hair in the light cast by the street lamps, Ryan shouted out for his men to lower their weapons. Which was bad timing, because at that very moment, the tarpaulins exploded upwards as six Skel warriors, laying in wait beneath them, threw them off and charged the hapless Custodians.
Seeing the barbarians appearing to erupt from the very ground sent the men into panic, two even tripping over as they hastily back peddled from the imminent threat. The Skel were on top of them in an instant, hewing them with spiked metal clubs. One man tried to shoot but his hands were shaking so much he fumbled the shot. A moment later, he was shot in the neck with a crossbow bolt. The next two Custodians managed to fire their assault rifles as they stepped backward. Unfortunately, they followed standard Custodian tactics and aimed at their opponents’ chests, which saw the bullets ricochet in all directions.
Ryan, meanwhile unloaded the entire contents of his pistol into the body of the Skel that charged him, also without effect. He quickly grabbed another clip but the Skel was on him before he could slam it home. He ducked and dodged the first two great swipes of his opponent’s club but was forced back against the building behind him in the process. I watched helplessly as he turned into the next blow, deliberately taking it on his chest armour so he could reload his gun. The clip slammed home, he grabbed the hulking Skel by the shoulders with his left arm, placed his gun against his neck, and fired several shots. The brute went down.
Desperate to help, I sprinted across the street and into the midst of the fray. Leaving the closest Skel for Ryan to deal with, I attacked the next one, scrambling up his back like a monkey even as he wrestled a Custodian towards the building. Using the same technique as before, I pulled back his garish skull helmet with one arm while slashing his throat with the other. Jumping away before the monster could fall on top of me, I checked to see if Ryan was okay, breathing a sigh of relief when I saw him gun down his next opponent with shots to his throat.
“Look out, Chelsea!” Bhagya screamed as she ran across the road to help us.
I ducked instinctively, and just in time, for a Skel with a helmet adorned with ram horns sighted and fired his reloaded crossbow at me. The bolt passed over my shoulder, missing it by mere inches.
“Stay down!” Bhagya shouted. She opened up on the Skel with an assault rifle she had retrieved from the ground. At least one of her bullets found a weak chink in the chest plate –the monster bellowed obscenities and collapsed, blood gushing from the wound.
The last two Skel attacked together with clubs raised overhead.
“Aim for their throats!” I shouted to my companions as I skipped backwards from their terrifying charge. Ryan was already doing that, but Bhagya quickly adjusted her aim, and both skeletal armoured warriors crashed to the ground with multiple gunshot wounds to the neck.
Ryan took a quick inventory of his losses, and swore like a trooper when he saw that three of his men were dead. Two had been beaten to a pulp by Skel clubs, the third slain by an arrow. Of his last two men, one appeared untouched but the other cradled his left arm, the sleeve soaked with blood. Both men looked at Bhagya and me with mouths open, unable to comprehend that two slim girls could fight and defeat Skel. I took a guess that not all of the Custodians were privy to the Specialists’ existence.
“Where the blazes have you been these past three days?” Ryan snapped, anger shining from his eyes like twin high beam headlights.
“Bound and gagged in the bottom of a ba
sement,” I said, sending a weighted look in Bhagya’s direction. “But that’s of no consequence now. We’ve got to get into the lab and stop the Rangers before they can get their hands on you-know-what.” I couldn’t say ‘virus’ with two Custodians standing there, listening to every word we said.
“Rangers are in the lab?” The look of anger was replaced by a look of absolute and utter horror. “Any idea how many there are?”
“Bhagya?” I prompted.
“Three, I think – that’s how many entered the town. They’ve probably got more Skel with them, though,” she replied.
Ryan eyed her keenly. “We have to call for backup.”
“We don’t have time! Besides, how would they even reach us through that?” I pointed towards the sound of fighting farther down the road.
I quickly retrieved an Austeyr assault rifle from one of the slain Custodians, glad Mr. Cho trained us how to use them. I also pocked some hand grenades, just in case.
“You think the five of us–” he paused and considered his wounded man, “four of us, can deal with this?”
“Don’t count me out, please, Sir. This gun’s easy to use one-handed,” the wounded Custodian said. Which was true, a unique characteristic of the Austeyr assault rifle.
“As you wish, Private,” Ryan said.
Slinging the rifle over my shoulder, I ripped the sleeve from a fallen Custodian and checked the private’s arm with echolocation. His arm wasn’t broken, but there were several ugly, dirty puncture marks in his upper arm, caused by the spikes on a Skel’s club.
Glancing at his nametag, I quickly bound up the arm. “You’re going to need a tetanus shot when this is over, Private Daniels.”
Eying me with distrust, he nodded all the same.
I handed another assault rifle to Ryan. “We have to do this. Now.”
“We could be walking into another trap, Chelsea!”
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 120