Savage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel (23 page)

Garfield struggled against his bonds and tried to
shout a warning through his gag, but one of the soldiers gave him a tap with
his boot and then placed a finger over his lips to shush him. 
Kirk and
the others are outside.  They won’t know what hit them. 
He
started to shimmy along the concrete floor like a worm, trying to reach the
edge of the shed where the others would see him.  Before he even got half
way, he was yanked to his feet by the soldiers and frogmarched forward. 
They took him to exactly where he had wanted to go: out into the road where
Kirk would see him.

Lemon, Cat, and David were marched along behind him,
their unsteady legs wobbling.  Kirk spotted them immediately, but just
stood there confused.  Sally was crouched down on the floor, swigging from
a bottle of water.  When he saw the armed men marching Garfield and the
others along, he smiled and shook his head. 
He thinks this is funny.

“Nobody move,” said the lead soldier.  He grabbed
a hold of Garfield’s hair and shoved him to the ground.  The other two
soldiers did the same with Cat, David, and Lemon.  All four of them sat
bound and gagged in a line. 

“Who are you people?” Kirk asked.

“That’s a question you need to answer first,” said the
solider, “and if you say
Jehovah’s Witnesses,
you’re dead.”

Kirk had gone pale, likely from the sight of the
soldier’s assault rifles.  He stuttered as he spoke.  “W-we’re just
people.  We wanted to find some guns.”

The soldier pointed his rifle.  “Well, you found
some, mate.  I’ll show you the bullets, too, if you want?”

“No, please,” said Kirk.  “We’re not here to
cause trouble.  We didn’t know anyone was here.”

The solider pointed with his rifle.  “You people
make that hole in our fence?”

Garfield shuffled on to his side to get a better look
at Kirk.  The lad was clearly scared, but he was dealing with things in
the best way possible: by being polite.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “We
thought this place was abandoned so we cut through.  We can barricade it
back up if you’d like.”

“Good as new,” said Sally.  “You won’t even know
we were here, mate.”

“We’re not your mates and we’ll deal with the
fence.  You people are leaving.”

“Come on,” said Sally.  “You three fellas don’t
need all this stuff to yourself.  Surely you can spare a few rifles and
one of those trucks.”

“Yes,” said the soldier.  “We could.  We
could spare a lot.  But what’s to say you people won’t take our rifles and
use them to kill innocent people?  That’s the problem, you see?  Most
men get their hands on a gun and they start misbehaving.  Even the men at
this base headed off on the road to become kings of their own fiefdoms.  I
don’t know what happened to them, but I know it wouldn’t have been good for
anyone who got in their way.  There’s been enough death, without us
letting a bunch of weaponry fall into the wrong hands.”

Garfield frowned. 
They’re good guys. 
But,
despite the fact that the three soldiers seemed to endorse non-violence, they’d
still taken Garfield and the others captive.  There was no telling what
could still happen, so he reached down into the shin pocket of his cargo pants
and pulled out the can opener Anna had given him.  Then he got to work,
sawing at the zip-tie around his wrists.

“You need to leave,” said the soldier.  “Once
you’re back in your van, we’ll send our prisoners after you.  You can pick
them up at the end of the road.”

“Screw that,” said Sally.  “We came a long way to
get here.  We have a pier full of people on the south coast that need
protecting.”

The soldier shuffled and readjusted his rifle. 
It was obviously getting heavy in his hands.  “You have a camp?  Huh,
I thought all that was left was a handful of bandits.”

“Yeah,” said Sally.  “We have a little girl there
and an old man.  We’re a community.”  Garfield gritted his teeth as
Sally spoke about his home; the home the Australian had never even
visited. 

Kirk took a step forward.  “Actually, Sally here
has never been to the pier.  We picked him up en route here.  That’s
what we do; we help those in need.  We only wanted weapons to protect our
people.  Nothing more.”

Garfield nodded.  Kirk was handling the situation
well.  The soldier started to relax a little.  Even so, Garfield
continued sawing at the zips around his wrists.  The can opener was blunt
but it was slowly biting through the plastic. 
Nearly
there.

The soldier took a step forward and shook his
head.  He raised his rifle and pointed it right at Kirk. 
“Leave.  I won’t ask you again.  You’re not taking our guns. 
Just be glad you’re leaving in one piece.”

Kirk took another step forward and went to speak, but
a loud
clack
of gunfire
cut him off.  The noise was followed
by absolute silence.  Garfield stared in horror as he waited for Kirk to
fall. 
Damn it.  He pushed too far.  That step forward had
been a mistake. 
But he was taken by surprise when the soldier in
front of him tumbled backwards, clutching his gut.  Garfield couldn’t see
the blood, but he could smell it, along with a foul smell that must have been
coming from the man’s pierced bowel. 
What the hell just
happened.

The two other soldiers opened fire.  Kirk threw
himself through the air and to the ground, which was when Garfield spotted
Sally holding a smoking pistol in his hand. 
Where the hell did that
come from? 
Instead of trying to work out the answer, Garfield slit
the last shred of plastic zip-tie and sprung his wrists free.  He leapt up
to his feet and barrelled into the nearest soldier, yanking a metal pole from
his inside pocket and clonking it against the man’s head.  The soldier
fell to the floor unconscious.  Garfield grabbed his rifle just as Cat
leapt up and charged the remaining soldier.  Her hands were still bound
but that didn’t stop her from knocking him off-balance.  By the time the
soldier recovered, Garfield had the rifle aimed squarely at his face.  “I
have no idea how to use this thing,” he said, “but if I pull the trigger you
die, right?”

The soldier snickered.  “Way you’re holding it,
it’ll take your shoulder off.”

“But you’ll still die, right?”  The man scowled
and then nodded his head, defeated.  “Then drop your weapon and I’ll keep
my finger of the trigger.”

The soldier did as he was told and Kirk and the others
came rushing over to secure him and the other soldier that Garfield had
bludgeoned.  They tied the men up with their own zip-ties.

“They killed Tom and Gavin,” said Kirk, shaking his
head.

“You fired first,” said the uninjured soldier. 
He pointed down at his dying comrade.  “You shot
Haltek
in the stomach.”

Kirk looked down at the man.  “I’m sorry about
that.”

Garfield wasn’t sorry, he was angry.  “What the
hell were you doing, Sally?”  He shoved the man backwards and fought the
urge to open fire on him with the rifle.  “Where the hell did you even get
that gun from?”

Sally shrugged.  “Farmer had it back at that
farmhouse.  Figured he wasn’t going to use it wandering around the
kitchen.”

Garfield hissed and swore, but then went very silent
as a thought occurred to him.  He put a few things together in his head
before he spoke again.  “You…you told us you never went inside that
farmhouse. 
Trespassing
you called it.”

Sally shrugged.  “I lied.  So what?  I
wasn’t sure what you fellas were like, so I kept a few things to myself. 
Truth is I saw you lot coming and went out the back.  Came round the side
with my hands above my head.”

Kirk shook his head.  “Who cares?  “What
difference does it make?”

“It makes a lot of difference,” said Garfield. 
“He said he took the gun off the old man in the kitchen, but I was in the
kitchen and nobody was there.  The only old man we found was hanging by
his neck, along with his wife and child.”

Kirk’s pupil’s flickered as the memory came back to
him.  He had been deeply affected at the time and had needed Garfield to
deal with the situation.  He turned to Sally.  “You…you hung them up
by their necks?  Why?”

Sally shrugged.  “
Dunno
,
really.  It gets boring being on yer own.  Mind does all sorts of
thing.  Look, mate, I’m sorry.  It was a bit of a sick thing to do,
but I didn’t harm anyone.  They were already dead.”

“This man wasn’t, though,” said Garfield, pointing
down at the soldier who had finally died whilst they were talking.  “He
didn’t need to die.  He didn’t want to shoot anyone.  Kirk could have
talked him around.”

“No way, mate,” said Sally.  “We were about to
leave with our tail between our legs.  After coming all this way, we were
about to leave with nothing.  I got you
all this
place, so stop having a pop at me.  Just chill out, mate.”

“I’m not your mate.”

“No, you’re a bleeding whinger.  Best we just
leave your moany arse behind.”  He turned his attention to the
soldier.  “Do you have the keys to those trucks over there?  And the
Armoury?”

The soldier said nothing, so Sally yanked off his
balaclava and got in his face.  The man had a shaved head and high,
angular cheekbones.  His chin looked like it could dent iron.

Sally stood nose to nose with the man before saying,
“We can either get the keys from your corpse or you can hand them over.”

The soldier sighed and reached into the pockets of his
utility belt.  His hand came out with a large bundle of keys. 
“Everything I have is on there. 
Haltek
has the
rest of the keys.  You can get them from his corpse.”

Sally snatched the keys and then went to retrieve the
other set from the dead soldier.  During that time, Garfield asked the
soldier a simple question.  “What’s your name?”

The soldier grunted.  “Sergeant Price,
2684573.  First Battalion, Parachute Regiment.”

So that’s why these guys are such
badasses
,
thought Garfield.  Garfield had briefly considered joining the
Army when he was a teenager.  He had consumed every war movie and magazine
he could find.  One thing quickly became obvious; you don’t fuck with the
Paras
.  When Garfield’s father had died, leaving his
mother all alone, he had put all thoughts of travelling the world in a uniform
aside.  But how different might his life have been if he had taken the
same path as Price?  The two of them were of a similar age.  “Was
Haltek
a
para
as well?” Garfield
asked.

“All three of us are.  When the other soldiers
stationed here set out on the road, we chose to remain here and protect the
base from people like you.”

Garfield sighed.  Although he hated it, he was
pretty sure he was one of the bad guys in this situation.  “Look, what
Sally did, killing your man, was nothing to do with the rest of us.  We
picked him up on our travels.  I didn’t even know he had a gun.”

“If you don’t support his actions, punish him. 
If you do nothing then you are condoning his actions.”

“That’s not true.  I…I’m not in charge
here.  It’s not my responsibility.”

“Yes, it is. 
Haltek
would never have fired on your people.  You could have all left safely if
the dingo hadn’t fired that cap gun at us.”

“Might have been a cap gun,” said Sally, overhearing
them.  “But it took care of your mate alright, didn’t it?”

Sergeant Price made a move towards Sally, but Garfield
raised the rifle in his hands and shook his head.  “Let’s make sure no one
else gets shot, okay?”

The soldier glared at him.  “This berk is going
to get you people killed.  I’ve seen men like him plenty of times
before.  Most of them ended up dead or in the
Glasshouse.
”

“Nah, mate.  You
ain’t
. 
I’m one of a kind.  A real beaut.”

“Alright,” said Kirk.  “Let’s just get what we
came for and we can leave these men in peace.”

Sally scoffed.  “Are you kidding?  Soon as
we try to set off, GI Joe and Private Pyle here are going to grab themselves a
weapon and become unpleasant.  Can’t leave them alive.”

“What should we do?” Garfield spat.  “Hang them
by their necks?”

“Good a method as any.”

Kirk grabbed Sally by the arm.  “Just get to
work.  I’ll decide what to do with the soldiers when the time
comes.” 

Sally shrugged his shoulders and snapped off a
salute.  “Yessir.  Right away, sir.”  Then he swaggered off
towards the armoury.”

Kirk strode over to sergeant Price.  “Get down on
the floor beside your buddy.  Sit on your hands and don’t try
anything.  We’ll be out of your hair before you know it.”

When Price didn’t respond, Kirk kicked the man’s legs
out from under him and dragged him over to the other soldier who Garfield had
struck with his metal pipe.

Somehow Garfield couldn’t help but feel like a brutish
Viking sacking a defenceless village.  It left a bad taste in his
mouth. 
We’re the bad guys here.