Land of Dust and Bones: The Secret Apocalypse Book 7 (8 page)

The girl is dead. She is lying in a pool of her own blood. She no longer has a
face, or most of a head.

My brain takes a few seconds to figure out
what the hell is going on.

What was wrong with her?

What broke her?

It wasn’t the infected. It wasn’t the
military or the company or the containment protocol. It wasn’t the nano-swarms.
It wasn’t mutated monsters.

It was something else.

She had looked at Billy. She had looked at
him with absolute fear in her eyes. She didn’t want to leave the oasis.

She didn’t want to live.

Why the hell not?

Maybe she was infected. Maybe this is why
she killed herself. Maybe this is why she blew her brains out.

One of the Evo Agents, the leader, the one
that was kneeling down, the one that has kept his helmet and face mask on,
takes a deep, deep breath. “Goddamn nut case,” he says. “She didn’t want to
live. Makes our job easier. Now, retrieve your weapon and let’s get out of
here. Can’t wait to explain this mess to command.”

But this guy, this super soldier, he may as
well have been talking to himself.

Well, he was talking to himself.

Because his buddy, his partner, his brother
in arms, the sniper, was also lying in the dirt, lying in a pool of his own
blood, staring up at the heavens with one eye.

This is the price you pay for taking off
your helmet.

“Oh no,” the leader says. “Oh God, no.”

They’re
all dead.

Who was she talking about?

What was she so afraid of?

I can’t figure out what’s going on.

It all happened so damn quickly.

And I swear to God, I only heard one
gunshot.

The girl pulled the trigger. She killed
herself.

And yet somehow, we’ve got two dead bodies.

I look at Kenji and Sarah. They are both in
shock as well. They are just as confused as me. They have never seen anything
like this before. I don’t think anyone has seen anything like this before.

And Billy?

Billy is on his feet. He is the only one
able to act, the only one able to move.

He has retrieved the blood covered gun from
the girl, the instrument of self-destruction.

He aims it at the head of the last
surviving Evo Agent. “Drop your rifle.”

The tables have turned, the balance of
power has shifted, and the Evo Agent knows it. He does what he is told to do
without protest. He removes his sidearm from his holster. He throws it on the
ground.

“Any frag grenades?”

The Evo Agent slowly shakes his head.

“Any EMP grenades?”

Again, he shakes his head.

“Take your helmet off. Need to get a look
at you.”

He removes his mask and his helmet. And
again, I can’t get over how young these guys are. This guy is an Evo Agent, a
super soldier. And yet he’s maybe eighteen years old. Nineteen at the most. He
is so unbelievably young.

Daniel
had said they were stretched thin. Really thin.

But this is ridiculous.

These guys are kids.

Billy moves up to the Evo Agent. He pushes
him in the back of the head. “You play along and you can avoid ending up like
your friend. Deal?”

The Evo Agent nods along. He can’t speak.
He is in shock. Just like the rest of us.

Well, everyone except Billy.

And I still can’t get over how young these
guys are. If I had to guess, I’d say the company took these guys, stole them
from the military,
stole
them from elite training
programs. Promised them money and freedom. Promised them the world. And then
they pumped them full of the nano-virus. Turned them into supermen and threw
them to the wolves, to the zombies and the monsters and the swarms and the
hordes. I remember Daniel told me how he was training to become a Navy Seal
when Ethan, a mercenary working for the company, came to him in the middle of
the night. Recruited him. How? How did he make his way inside the goddamn Navy
Seals training base?

Did he sneak in, using the NBC suit’s
invisibility cloak? Or did the military, did the Navy Seals know about Ethan?
Do they know about the company? Maybe they have an agreement, an understanding.
Maybe there’s a deal in place. If there is, it’s probably worth millions. Or
billions.

These conspiracy theories swirl around in
my head. Small fortunes. Large fortunes. Is money worth anything anymore? Is it
worth the paper that it’s printed on?

I shake my head. I blink my eyes. I need to
focus. I need to focus on figuring out exactly what the hell had just happened.

“What the hell happened?” I ask, staring at
the dead Evo Agent. “Who did that? Who shot him?”

“Our very own guardian angel,” Billy
answers.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“My big brother, Marko. He’s always got my
back.” Billy points to the sky. “He’s up there. Would you like to meet him? He
would very much like to meet you.”

Billy’s big brother, Marko, our guardian angel, climbs down into the oasis. He
has a large rifle with a long barrel and an expensive looking scope slung over
his back. In one hand he is carrying rope and duct tape. In the other hand he
is carrying a weird looking contraption that looks something like a cross
between a mini-helicopter and a giant spider.

“Took this fella out,” he says, showing
Billy. “Mini-drone. I guess they were using it for recon.”

Billy whistles his approval. “So many toys.”

Marko throws the destroyed drone on the
ground in front of the surviving Evo Agent. “This yours?”

No response.

“Hey. I’m asking you a question. Is this
yours?”

The Evo Agent nods his head slowly.

Marko picks up the sniper rifle and admires
it. “Nice piece of hardware.”

To my surprise, Marko is wearing a police
uniform. The badge on his arm says, ‘Western Australian Police Force’.

Before I can ask him where he came from, or
if he’s a police officer, or if there are any cops left in the world, he gets
busy tying up the Evo Agent. “Now listen here, mate,” he says in a friendlier
tone than I expected. “We’ve
gotta
climb back up that
cliff right there. So I’ll tell you what I’m
gonna
do. I’m not
gonna
tie your legs together. Because to
be honest, I don’t
wanna
carry you all that way. I
don’t even know if I could. So, I guess what I’m really trying to say is, don’t
you cause me or my brother any trouble, you hear? You cause anymore goddamn
trouble and I will break your legs. I will break every single bone in your
legs. The femur. The fibular. The tibia. Your kneecap. Your ankle. Then I’ll
start on all those little bones in your feet.”

He unhooks a hammer from his belt. He shows
the Evo Agent, holds it up to his face. “I will break your legs with this. And
trust me, mate, you do not want this. I’ve seen people with bad hearts die from
the pain. I’m assuming your heart is in good condition. So death will not come
quickly for you.”

Again, the Evo Agent slowly nods his head.
He understands his situation. He is a prisoner of war. A hostage. And I can
tell by his body language, by the look on his face that he already knows what
his fate will be. He knows that soldiers, warriors… he knows they die.

It is what they do.

My mother once told me this. After my
father disappeared. I think she was trying to grieve, trying to move on. She
told me that soldiers and warriors are born to die. Death is what they train
for, it is what they prepare for. I didn’t believe her then, but I do now.

The cop, Marko, he finishes tying the Evo
Agent’s wrists together in front of his body. He then wraps duct tape around
the ropes, making double sure that his hands are secured.

He turns to Billy. “What the bloody hell
would you do without me, little brother?”

Kenji still has his hands up and Sarah has
not moved a muscle since we were ambushed.

We are in shock.

And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know
what to say. So I say, “Are you a cop? Are we in Western Australia?”

Marko laughs. “Nah, mate. We’re a long
bloody ways from the border. We’re in South Australia. We’re smack bang in the
middle of the Great Victoria desert.”

“Oh…”

“But yeah, I worked all over Western
Australia, once upon a time. Spent most of my time in
Kalgoorlie
.
Biggest precinct in the world, you know, in terms of square miles.”

For some reason, I feel that just because
he is wearing a uniform, that he was once an officer of the law, he can offer
some sort of guidance or protection. Even though the world where he was an
officer, a watchman, a protector, is long gone.

Maybe this is what it was like for people
when they saw Kim in the early days of the outbreak. Even though the world,
civilization was already crumbling, people still looked to the authorities for
guidance, for help. I remember when the military herded us over the Sydney
Harbor Bridge, just before they massacred hundreds of thousands of people. I
remember everyone either gave Kim a wide berth, or they would rush up to her,
asking her questions and demanding answers. They would do this because she was
wearing a uniform. They would do this even though at that point, she was part
of the herd. She was just like everyone else. She was powerless.

“Thanks for doing that,” I say to Marko.
“We… we don’t know what they would’ve done to us.”

“Yeah, you do,” he says. “They didn’t want
to invite you to a tea party, that’s for damn sure. Everyone is expendable.
Remember that. They would’ve questioned you. Promised you the world. And then,
they would’ve executed you.”

I wonder if that’s what they actually
would’ve done. They said they were going to take the girl in. Maybe they
would’ve taken us in.

Did they know who Kenji was?

Did they even care who he was?

Did they really want the information we
possessed?

Marko sees me thinking it over. “Don’t you
dare doubt it for a
second.
I know you’ve seen it.
You’ve seen what the military and what the other guys do. At this point in the
game, everyone’s on rations. Everyone’s got limited supplies. There’s no
farming. There’s no manufacturing. Everything has shut down. They can’t afford
to rescue anyone at the moment. It’s too costly.”

I lower my head. I know he is right. And I
think the problem is, my problem, the thought of being rescued, of being taken
away to a safe haven, some place behind giant walls, protected by giant guns,
protected by an army, this idea, this fantasy is so powerful, it is almost
irresistible. And I didn’t think I’d need to do it, but I need to remind myself
almost daily, that if we want to survive, if we want to have any kind of
future, we will need to do it on our own. We will need to build our own home.
We will need to build our own life.

We will need to carve out a living in this
dying world.

This will be no easy feat. So far, in just
a few months, we’ve seen military strong holds and safe zones become overrun.

Hospitals.

Sydney airport.

The Fortress.

So whatever we do and wherever we go, we’ll
have to make damn sure that we can not only survive, but that we can thrive,
that we can live a life, that we can defend ourselves if and when it comes to
that. But is planning for the future a waste of time? Is there any point? Back
before the world ended, planning for the future meant getting a good education,
finishing high school. Maybe college. Finding a job. Working hard. Buying a
nice house in a good neighborhood. Raising a family. Getting health insurance.
Growing old.

As I think about this… a kind of life, a
once normal life, flashes before my eyes. But this world no longer exists. And
any chance of having that kind of life no longer exists. Will we even have a
chance to grow old?

I wonder what the life expectancy has
dropped to in this new world.

Billy moves over to the girl and begins
tying her legs together. He basically wraps her entire body up in rope and duct
tape.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“We’ll take her back with us,” Marko
answers. “Give her a proper burial. Bury the dead. Treat them right.”

I point to the dead Evo Agent. “What about
him?”

“He chose his side.”

Fair enough, I think. Or is it? Did he
choose his side?

Who knows?

“Where are you guys heading?” Marko asks.

“South,” Sarah answers.

“South? That’s a dangerous place. Closer to
Adelaide. Closer to civilization.”

“We know. But…”

Sarah cuts herself off. She doesn’t know
how much to tell this guy, this former police officer…

“Let me guess,” Marko says. “You’ve got friends
holed up somewhere. Or you know a place that might be safe.”

“Yeah,” Kenji answers. “It’s worth the
risk.”

“It would want to be worth the risk. So…
what are you guys doing out here? And how the hell do you plan on getting to
wherever it is you’re going?”

“We’re on foot,” Kenji says.

“You’ve got to be kidding? You plan on just
walking out of the desert? That’s madness.”

“We don’t have any other choice.”

“Can you help us?” Sarah asks. “You have a
car, don’t you? How did you get here? Can you take us?”

Billy shakes his head. He then moves back
over to the Evo Agent and continues to tighten and fasten the ropes. He places
a gag in his mouth.

“Our place is west,” Marko says. “It’s
about a day from here.”

“Are you on foot?” she asks.

“No. By car. But I don’t have the fuel to
make two stops.”

“I can pay you,” Sarah says.

Marko laughs. “Money’s no good,
sweetheart.”

“Not with money.”

“What did you have in mind?”

“Whatever you need. Water. Food. Fuel.”

“What about Guns? Ammo?”

Sarah hesitates. “Yes. We have plenty.”

Marko smiles. “OK, that sounds good. It
sounds like you’ve got a pretty nice set up.”

“The town we’re travelling to, I think it
was chosen by the military to be some kind of temporary base. They came in
early, before I got there. They built walls. And they built storage facilities.
They’ve got everything you need. And if you get us there, we will reward you.
You have my word.”

“Walls?” Marko asks.

“That’s right.”

“Must be some impressive walls to keep out
the infected. And the other things. The black clouds.”

“They are impressive.”

Marko raises his eyebrows. “OK, I’ll take
you there. But we need to go to my camp first. I’ll need to re-fuel. Need to
fix the engine on my truck. She’s running hot.”

“Where’s your camp?” I ask.

“I told you.
It’s
west of here. You’re
gonna
love it. It’s a nice
little place called the Boneyard.”

“The Boneyard?”

“Yeah. Actually, it’s not little at all.”

“Why is it called the Boneyard?”

“Don’t worry. There are no actual bones
there. It’s just a nickname. It’s an Air Force storage area. It’s a place where
they store old, decommissioned aircraft.”

Kenji nods along. “There’s a large one in
America as well. In Arizona.”

“Yeah. The desert is the perfect place to
store decommissioned aircraft. Dry air. No humidity. It slows down the rate of
decay and rust. So if they need to, if they’re really desperate, they can bring
some of the newer planes out of retirement. Or they can use them for spare
parts.”

“What kind of aircraft?” I ask.

“All kinds. Fighters. Choppers. Passenger
planes. Cargo planes. Big. Small. Medium size. Seriously, I’ve walked through
the entire Boneyard. They’ve got everything. Stuff as old as World War Two. And
stuff so new they don’t even have names for them. The whole thing has a giant
electrified boundary fence. Solar powered. State of the art. Didn’t really do
too much to discourage the dead folk, but it kept those black clouds away.
Thankfully.”

“Must’ve created a protective electrical
field,” Kenji says, thinking aloud.

“What do you mean?”

“The black clouds are made up of a
nano-virus.”

“A nano what?”

“The cloud is made up of microscopic
robots. They’re mobile. They’re deadly. But the electric fence, if the current
was strong enough, it would’ve fried them. Or at the very least, it would’ve
kept them away.”

Marko shrugs his shoulders. “I just figured
they were alien, or something from hell. Figured this was just one more thing.
Plague. Famine. Death. All that stuff.”

Kenji shakes his head. “Just the work of
man.

“EMP grenades seem to do the trick,” I say.
“That’s why the soldiers and these guys started carrying them. Won’t kill them.
Won’t stop them permanently. But it will stun them. Put them into a state of
hibernation.”

“How do you guys know all this?” Marko
asks.

“We had to learn the hard way.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.

“It’s fine. At least we’re still learning.
At least we’re still alive and able to learn.”

“Yeah, well, weird thing is,” Marko adds.
“We haven’t seen any of the black clouds in a while. Three days at least. Saw a
big bright flash in the sky, something that looked like a nuke going off.”

“It was actually three nukes,” I say.

“Three? Goddamn. Well, since that day, I
haven’t seen any black clouds, or nano-swarms, or whatever they’re called. And
the fence is no longer electrified. Actually, anything that was outside is no
longer working. We had an electric generator and we had a few cars parked
outside, none of them are working. Even the solar power generator is busted.”