“Breathe! Come on, Ethan, breathe!” a nurse shouted as he slapped my face.
My chest heaved as I sucked in a deep breath.
“That’s it, keep going,” he encouraged.
I tried to focus on the nurse, to work out where I was, but everything felt off. I’d never been blind drunk, but I reckon this was what it felt like. My thoughts were sluggish, I could barely move, I couldn’t focus my eyes, and I couldn’t speak. I was also vaguely aware that my head was swathed in bandages.
“Don’t fight it. You’re just feeling the effects of the general anaesthetic. It’ll wear off soon enough. Just go back to sleep, eh?” the nurse said...
...and my body jolted as though struck, pulling me out of the dream. Morning sunlight streamed through the windows. I realised I was in my apartment, lying on the floor beside the front door. I wasn’t in the hospital. That was just one of my recurring nightmares where I relived waking from the brain surgery I’d had when I was eighteen. I remember those days clearly, although I wish I couldn’t.
The brain surgery had cured me of the epilepsy and cyclic amnesia. However, it also affected my minor and major motor skills, including speech. After my recovery, I spent day after day in rehabilitation with speech therapists and physiotherapists. It was agonisingly slow going and extremely frustrating.
I tore my mind away from the nightmare and memories of that most unpleasant time, and wondered how many hours I sat against the door last night before finally fallen asleep. I was stiff and sore, but not overly so as I often slept on the concrete rooftop of the building.
Still tormented by the troubled, miserable expression on Nanako's face last night, I had zero interest in food. I drank a glass of water and threw a couple of pieces of fruit and a bottle of water into my backpack. I didn't pack food for lunch as I figured I'd be in no mood to eat at lunchtime either.
That done, I left my flat and headed for work. It normally took fifteen minutes to walk there, but I stretched it out to half an hour so I wouldn't arrive early. I had no interest in talking to anyone today, especially not In-Your-Face-Cooper.
My walk was plagued with thoughts of Nanako, of how a perfect evening with a beautiful and mysterious girl turned sour when I told her I was getting married. That she reacted like this could mean she felt something for me, and was hurt by the news of my marriage. If so, such a strong reaction surprised me, for we had only known each other for a few days. Surely she could see that there was nowhere our relationship could go from here.
Could I be her reason for not leaving Newhome with Councillor Okada? It sounded so improbable, but when I considered all the evidence, I realised this had to be a possibility.
I was still lost in this mental quagmire when I saw Lieutenant King waiting for me at the Recycling-Works gates with a savage scowl on his face. This wasn't gonna be a good day.
"That was some stunt you pulled last night, Jones," he hissed when I reached him.
Still feeling somewhat distressed, I was in no mood to placate him. "My apologies, Lieutenant, but I was otherwise detained," I replied, the tone of my voice bordering on insolence.
"My father was most displeased. Don’t pull any stupid stunts like that tonight, you hear me?”
“I will be there as arranged, Sir,” I assured him.
“You’d better be. Now hop in your truck and let’s go.”
As I walked over to my teammates, Michal saw my dour expression and raised an eyebrow. I just shrugged in response. I wasn’t going say anything in front of the others.
“Okay scavengers, pack them behinds into the truck!” Cooper ordered as he reached for the driver’s door.
“We’re foragers, not scavengers,” Shorty protested.
“A kettle by any other name is still a kettle, Shorty. We go out into a dead, ruined city and scavenge amongst the decaying ruins for scrap metal. Calling us ‘foragers’ is just some drongo’s attempt to make us think more highly of ourselves than we ought. Now, let’s go.”
On a normal day, I would have taken issue with Cooper’s scornful comments, but I didn’t have the heart for it. I climbed in next to him and we set off for the town gates, the Bushmaster roaring after us.
There was no sign of Nanako, just as I expected.
Once out of town, Cooper drove us east, following exactly the same route he took yesterday. We drove slowly down Dryburgh Street and then towards the CBD itself. We went past rusted out cars and trucks, through shrubbery and wild grasses that flourished in every crack in the roads and sidewalks, until we reached the restaurant we had worked on yesterday.
Cooper backed the truck up to the concrete steps and we clambered out and put on our utility belts. The Custodians parked the Bushmaster in the middle of the street, one private popping out the roof hatch to operate the machine gun, while King and another private exited the vehicle by its rear door. They glanced about the street once, announced their thorough investigation was complete, and gave us the go head to begin work.
“David, you’re upstairs with me,” Cooper snapped, “You other three finish tearing out the lead sheeting from the kitchen floor.”
With Michal wielding his sledgehammer and Shorty and I our crowbars, we traipsed up the concrete steps and into the shell of the restaurant's foyer. All the windows were gone and the wooden frame of the customer-service counter had rotted away, leaving the plastic top lying on the floor amidst a carpet of leaves, twigs, dirt, and plaster that had peeled from what was left of the ceiling. We threaded our way across the dining room, which was an even greater mess than the foyer. The wooden tables had rotted quite badly – most of their legs had collapsed, and the chairs had fared no better. Chunks of plaster had fallen on everything, and the place stank of mildew and mould.
Switching on his torch, Shorty led us to the large kitchen out the back, where we paused and surveyed our previous day's handiwork. After moving the ovens and benches we could shift, we had ripped up most of the disgustingly filthy linoleum floor tiles so we could pull out the grimy, thin lead sheets beneath. Lead sheeting was a common waterproofing system in commercial kitchens. Several kilos of lead were rolled up, but we were only part of the way through.
I grabbed Shorty’s torch and panned it back and forth as I considered which section of the floor to tackle first, when an uneasy feeling rose in my gut. "Hold up, guys," I said quietly, examining our surroundings with more than casual interest now. If I wasn't mistaken, the room had been tampered with ever so slightly. "I don't recall seeing the freezer door open yesterday, and I’m sure we put those rolls of lead in front of it, not beside it."
Michal hefted his sledgehammer and we approached the walk-in freezer as quietly as we could. Suddenly Cooper started screaming “Skel!” at the top of his voice, followed by the sound of his heavy boots thumping on the floorboards above.
At the exact same instant, the walk-in freezer door swung open and a horrifying, skeletal apparition burst into the room, made all the more terrifying by the flickering torchlight and the cow horns protruding from the sides of the skull-helmet. The Skel looked like a demon from the depths of hell. He was also one of the biggest I had ever seen. He charged us while yelling obscenities and brandishing a converted axe. Shorty and Michal fell back in shock, but I noticed he was timing his swing to hit Michal, not me. So I did the last thing the Skel expected. I ducked inside his swing and thrust my crowbar at his throat. Unfortunately, his beefy arms got in the way and threw off my aim, causing the blow to glance off his skull-protected face.
The good news was that my attack had given Michal time to recover his balance, step forward and deliver a mighty swing of his sledgehammer to the Skel's head. The human skull he wore as a helmet exploded and he went down with a massive thud.
However, before we could breathe a sigh of relief, the door at the back of the kitchen smashed open, allowing brilliant sunlight – and two more Skel – into the room.
"Run!" I shouted.
Shorty and Michal didn't need any convincing and sprinted out of the kitchen while I brought up the rear. The Skel, one small and one large, gave pursuit – two more nightmarish ghouls to haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
As I darted into the dining room, a crossbow bolt missed my head by inches and imbedded itself into the far wall. I glanced back and cried out when I saw that the smaller Skel was only a step behind, hands reaching out to grab me. I threw myself to the right as I twisted to the left and brought down the crowbar. It connected with my pursuer’s right arm, breaking the bone armour and possibly their arm as well.
To my surprise, a woman yelped in pain and uttered a stream of four letter words that would have made me blush had I not been in such dire circumstances – the smaller Skel was female!
Refusing to let this astonishing revelation distract me, I regained my balance and rammed her with my shoulder, sending her reeling into a half-collapsed table. I would have followed this with another crowbar strike, but decided against that particular plan of action when the larger Skel barged out of the kitchen.
I turned and raced after Shorty and Michal, glancing back on occasion to make sure he wasn’t gaining on me.
My teammates and I sprinted out of the darkened restaurant and into the sunlit street. At the same time, the Custodian operating the Bushmaster's roof-mounted machine gun opened fire upon a target on the far side of the street.
King rushed over to us, gun at the ready, "Forget the truck – get in the Bushmaster!"
"Keep your eyes open," I shouted to Shorty and Michal as we ran around the truck to reach the Custodian's vehicle, "they've got us surrounded!"
Hearing a machine gun fire a short burst behind us, I glanced back and sighed with relief when I saw that King had gunned down the Skel who had pursued us in the restaurant.
We hurried to the back of the Bushmaster, where a Custodian held the door open with one hand while keeping his Austeyr assault-rifle ready with the other. Shorty and Michal clambered in and sat down next to Cooper, who was sitting at the front behind the driver’s position.
“Where’s David?” I demanded as I put one foot into the Bushmaster and safety.
Cooper refused to meet my gaze, “I don’t know, one minute he was behind me, the next he wasn’t.”
“You left him behind?” I asked incredulously, not believing what I was hearing.
Cooper glanced at me, guilt and fear etched on his face.
I think I hesitated for all of a second, and then the enormity of what he was saying exploded in my mind. The Skel had David! My teammate and friend had been caught by those abominations, who were even now no doubt carting him away to a fate far, far worse than death.