Forager (24 page)

The uneasy feeling in my stomach expanded into a tidal wave of dread that swept right through me. I staggered back a step in shock and my face blanched. I turned my head slowly towards King.

To my surprise, he was watching me intently. He had seen my shocked reaction.

"King, what are you doing?"

"You know, don't you." He glowered at me as though I was evil incarnate. "You're the accursed bio-engineered scum I've been searching for these past two weeks."

"Answer the question, King."

"I'm doing what needs to be done," he snarled.

"There’s no justification for genocide, King!"

"It's either them or us. They're behind the Skel attacks on Newhome and you know it. Now back off and keep your mouth shut!" He returned to watching the TTC workers unload the rest of the boxes from the trailer.

“You said Nanako and I could stay here after you left – you’re trying to kill us too.”

“That was the general idea. Now shut up and let the trade go ahead, and then maybe I’ll let you two come back with us.”

I had no idea when the bomb was set to go off, but I guessed it would be soon after we left. In which case, there probably wasn't a great deal of time to deal with this insanity.

A dozen scenarios involving me attacking King fled through my mind, but with my arm in a sling there was no way I could carry them out. Instead, I reached back and touched Nanako's hand, getting her attention. Turning my head half towards her so that I could also watch King, I made a massive effort and somehow forced myself to speak entirely in Japanese. "Nanako, quietly and without making a fuss, please go and warn the officer in charge of the Militia security detail that the Custodians have brought a bomb with them."

"What?" Her voice wavered.

"Just trust me."

She nodded and tried to walk nonchalantly towards the Militia sergeant standing near the roller shutter door.

Unfortunately, King noticed our exchange and, putting two and two together, realised I was not going to play along like he had hoped.

In a blindingly fast move he drew his sidearm and aimed for Nanako. I shouted to distract him and knocked his gun aside so that the shot went wide. Nanako threw her arms over her head and flung herself behind the closest forklift while shouting in Japanese to the Militia sergeant.

I tried to disarm King with a knife-hand strike to his arm but he was expecting it this time. He sidestepped my blow and thumped the butt of his pistol on my chest, directly over my wound. Agonising pain speared through my chest and I collapsed at his feet. I writhed about on the ground, trying to ride out the wave of pain and stay conscious.

The secret out, King turned to the Bushmaster and shouted, "Secure the dock!"

The loading dock instantly descended into complete pandemonium.

King fired his pistol at the Militia sergeant, downing him with his second shot. At the same time, the Custodian operating the Bushmaster's roof-mounted machine gun opened up. He cut down two more Militia and forced the rest to scatter. The last two Custodians came running out the back of the Bushmaster and attacked the Militia squad guarding the gates. They shot two and wounded a third, who crawled back around the gates towards safety. Another Militia used the gates for protection and fired at the Custodians, forcing them to duck for cover as well. One used the Bushmaster's rear door while the other hid behind a parked car.

The surviving Militia returned fire, snapping off frantic shots at the Custodians as they hurried towards cover. Two ducked inside the TTC, where they would pop out, fire a burst, and duck back. The rest took cover behind stacks of wooden pallets and the forklift trucks.

Still lying at King's feet as he engaged the Militia, I looked around for my fellow foragers and spotted them crouched beside the G-Wagon, eyes wide with fear and confusion. They had no idea why the Custodians suddenly opened fire on the Japanese.

I made eye contact with Michal and pointed at King and the Custodians, and then made a slashing motion across my throat with my finger. His eyes widened in surprise, shocked by my instructions. I repeated them just to make sure he understood. He finally nodded, opened the G-Wagon's rear passenger door and reached in to remove the bag of bows and arrows.

I looked around for Nanako and spotted her next to the forklift. She was kneeling beside the Militia sergeant shot by King, trying to stem the blood flowing from his chest. But going by her desperate expression, she was fighting a losing battle.

Bullets whizzed past and ricocheted off the Bushmaster as a new Militia squad rushed out of the TTC. Their charge was cut short as they were gunned down by the Bushmaster’s machine gunner. The remaining Militia in the courtyard kept firing at the Bushmaster, but without any effect.

I watched King hurry over to the fake refrigeration-maturation unit, unlock it and flip the lid open. He scooped out armloads of small plastic and metal containers that contained the dead chick embryos, and removed the metal shelf beneath them. Still holding to my aching chest, I clambered to my feet to find he was attempting to change the timer on the detonator. It was set at three hours, but he was no doubt trying to make it blow sooner. No wonder he wanted to drop off, pick up, and leave straight away.

Stepping behind the lieutenant, I pulled a small, sharp knife I had hidden in my boot and tried to stab him in the neck. Unfortunately, he sensed my movement and whirled towards me, causing the knife to plunge into his right shoulder instead.

Still, it was enough to distract him from the bomb. He flinched off the next blow I aimed at his bull-like neck and booted me in the stomach, driving me back a few steps. I made to rush back at him, but he grabbed his pistol with his left hand and aimed it at my head.

That would have been the end of me except for Michal, who suddenly appeared behind King and put him in a crushing neck hold, spoiling his aim as he fired. The bullet went wide, but still glanced off the right side of my forehead.

Everything went black.

I can't have been out for more than a few seconds. When I came to, I was laying on my side, facing King and Michal, who were still grappling. In what felt like a dream, I watched King's face go red and the veins on his neck bulge – he had a couple of seconds before Michal's neck hold would render him unconscious. But to my horror, King shoved the pistol behind him, pressed it against Michal's stomach, and fired three shots.

A strange expression crossed Michal's face as he slid slowly to his knees and slumped to the ground, his life fading away before my very eyes.

"No!" I shrieked as I reached for him. Michal glanced at me and then fell still.

I rolled to my knees, and with blood pouring down my face and into my eye, I crawled over to him while King went back to the bomb.

I checked Michal's pulse, but there was none. He was gone.

The enormity of what just happened crashed into me like a tidal wave. Michal, my best friend, had died trying to save me from King. A part of my heart withered and died along with him. I rested my hands and forehead on his shoulder and lamented the loss of a friend who had always been there for me. He had helped me in my moments of inexplicable melancholy, and I had comforted him when his family life sapped him of the will to live. No longer would he join us when we got together on the roof to goof around, no longer would he be the brawn behind our foraging efforts, and no longer could his younger brother and sister look up to him, as he set them a role model worth following.

I couldn't believe this had happened. Today was supposed to be a simple delivery run. The only potential danger was supposed to be from the person in Hamamachi who had shot me two years ago. We weren't supposed to be going up against our own Custodians!

Sitting back on my haunches, I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and pressed it against the bullet graze on my forehead in an attempt to staunch the blood flow. As I did, Leigh popped up from behind the G-Wagon's trailer, an arrow fitted to his bow. But before he could shoot at King, the gunner on the Bushmaster sent a hail of bullets at him. The arrow went wide and Leigh went down with blood spraying from his chest.

"No!" I screamed in horror at the sight of another close friend shot. A friend I dragged out of prison to come on this mission, thinking I was doing him a favour. It wasn’t supposed to lead to his death!

Hearing my shout, the Bushmaster’s machine gunner swivelled his weapon around and lined me up in his crosshairs. But before he could shoot, he clutched at his throat and then gurgling and choking, collapsed over his weapon, an arrow through his neck. By facing me he had exposed his back to my lads on the far side of the Bushmaster. It had cost him his life. Good riddance.

With the machine gunner out of the way, I rose and staggered over to King. I had to stop him changing the detonator's timer. But I was so feeble that he fended me off with his right arm, even though weakened by the knife wound. I watched him change the timer to five minutes and activate it. That done, he turned and sent me sprawling to the ground with a strong push.

He grabbed his pistol and aimed it at me. "You've no idea how much pleasure I'm going to get from killing you personally, Jones," he snarled.

"Nooooo!" Nanako shouted in rage as she leapt up from behind the forklift to come to my aide.

Distracted by her shout, King hesitated for only a moment, but it was a moment too long.

Armed with a Militia assault-rifle she had acquired, Nanako charged the lieutenant and unloaded the gun's entire clip into him.

King jerked about like a puppet on strings and collapsed, bleeding from a dozen places. Nanako dropped the gun, ran to my side and knelt down beside me, her eyes wide with horror as she took in the sight of my bloody head. "Oh no, Ethan, please, no, not again!"

I reached out and grabbed her hands. "I'm gonna be okay, Nanako. It looks worse than it is."

"But you've been shot in the head again!"

"It's not like last time, it's only a graze," I assured her. "But quickly, help me to my feet, we've got to deactivate the bomb or its lights out for us all in less than five minutes."

As my wife helped me to my feet, King grabbed my foot. "I win, Jones," he whispered, smiling feebly.

"Not yet," I replied as I kicked his hand away and staggered towards the bomb. And in dramatic contrast to the deafening clatter of the machine guns and ricocheting bullets, the dock had fallen deathly quiet. Another Custodian had an arrow through his throat, and the last one had been taken down by Militia gunfire.

"David! Grab your toolkit and get here pronto!" I shouted as loudly as I could manage as Nanako helped me to the bomb.

"I'm with Leigh, he's been hit," he shouted back.

"Sorry, but I need you here."

David left Leigh's side reluctantly and ran over to us carrying his toolkit.

"What just happened, Jones? Why did the Custodians go berserk?" he demanded.

I pointed to the fake refrigeration-maturation unit and said softly, "David, tell me you know how to deactivate a hydrogen bomb."

His eyes widened further than I thought humanly possible. "The Custodians brought a...?"

I clapped my hand over his mouth before he finished blurting out his question. The last thing we needed was mass hysteria. "David, we've got less than five minutes. How do we disarm it?"

"We can remove the IHE from the physics package or..."

"The what from the what?"

"Sorry, we can remove the insensitive high explosives from the warhead, or we can remove the exploding bridge-wire detonator from the IHE, sorry, the insensitive high explosives," he said with a shaky voice.

"I have no idea what you just said, but can you just do it already?"

David stuck his head in the box and looked inside, "Okay, okay, this is doable. They've put just the warhead and detonator in here. It shouldn't be too hard to get to the IHE if we work quickly." He pulled his head out of the box and reached for his bag.

"Don’t move!" commanded a very, very agitated Japanese Militia captain. "Drop your weapons, put your hands on your heads, and lie face down on the ground, or we will shoot!"

Looking up I saw that we were surrounded by several very irate squads of Japanese Militia, some of which had just arrived.

"We've got less than four minutes to deactivate this bomb or we all die!" I shouted back in Japanese.

"Do as I say or we shoot!" Several of them raised their guns, their fingers already beginning to depress their triggers.

"Stop, Captain! These men are on our side!" Nanako tried to explain, but a squad of Militia aimed their weapons at her as well.

I watched the detonator's timer counting down the seconds with an almost morbid fascination, barely aware of the Militia captain shouting at me to lie down.

It was over. For all of us. King had won.

“Stand down!” Okada bellowed, rising from his place behind the G-Wagon.

With that single order, the militia complied.

“We need to hurry!” I cried as Okada quickly joined us.

"What happened – why did the Custodians attack us? What is in that box?" the councillor demanded.

"The Custodians brought a bomb," and I whispered the next part so that only he could hear me, "a nuclear bomb, and it's set to go off in less than four minutes. You have to let us disarm it right now."

"A what?" the councillor asked in sheer disbelief. And then, in seeing that our serious expressions didn't change, he added, "No, absolutely not. I will get in the bomb disposal unit. We will evacuate the town immediately!"

"There's no time to wait for your team, nor any point in evacuating. No one could get far enough away from the blast radius," David replied.

I grabbed the councillor’s arm with a bloody hand. "You cannot get a better bomb disposal team than David and I, Sir. Trust, me, we can disarm this."

He stared at me for what felt like eternity, but in reality was only a couple of seconds, and then reluctantly nodded his consent. All the same, as David and I rushed to the bomb, he instructed the Militia captain to call in the bomb disposal unit. The rest of the Militia and TTC personnel moved quickly back from us.

"Right! I reckon removing the exploding-bridge-wire detonator is the best bet," David said. Then, “Shoot! There's a lid screwed over the top. We have to take it off first, but we'll need to get the bomb out of the box so I can see where the screws are. Man, we don’t have time for this!"

“Wait!” I said as I leaned on the unit's casing and made a few ultrasonic shouts. I pulled David to me. "Don't argue, just listen. Put your fingers down here, and here. There are two screws there, and two on the other side. Remove them and the lid will come off."

"Three minutes," Nanako announced quietly with a calm I didn't feel.

David nodded and set to work quickly removing the four screws with a combination of touch and his electric screwdriver. That done, we lifted off the aluminium lid, exposing the exploding-bridge-wire detonator.

"Two minutes," came Nanako's countdown to doom.

Armed with the tools he needed, David lay half inside the refrigeration-maturation unit and attacked the detonator wires one by one. Using echolocation I watched him work and marvelled how his fingers could operate so deftly considering what was at stake if he failed.

Finally, he pushed himself off the bomb and slid to the ground, breathing heavily. "It's done."

"The clock's still counting down!" Nanako pointed out in a panic. Councillor Okada had noticed too, his face white with fear.

"Don't worry, the wires are no longer connected to the explosives or the timer, so it's counting down to a non-event," David assured us.

Nevertheless, we all held our breaths and watched the counter tick down to zero.

"Now do you believe me?" David asked.

I wanted to give him a crushing hug, but didn't have the strength. The throbbing pain from my head and chest wounds were taking their toll, so I just sat on the ground beside him and leaned against the trailer.

The councillor congratulated us for disarming the bomb, as did several of the Militia. None of them, however, knew what sort of bomb we had just disarmed.

"David, where on earth did you learn how to deactivate a thermonuclear bomb?" I asked, completely in awe of his abilities.

David stared at me as though it was the first time we had met. "From books and manuals I found in the ruins and smuggled home," he replied. "But Jones, you wanna tell me how you can see through metal?"

Nanako placed a finger against David's lips. "Such questions are best not answered, David."

He nodded and said no more.

The threat of the bomb gone, reality came crashing back to me. "Michal, Leigh!"

"I'll check on Leigh," Nanako said, and she darted away with David at her side.

I staggered over to Michal's prone form and checked for a pulse again. I knew it was a futile exercise. He was gone.

Nanako ran back and knelt beside me. "Leigh's pretty bad, but I think he's gonna make it. Shorty and two Militia are looking after him."

I nodded, despair that we had lost Leigh turning into a sliver of hope. I don't know what I would have done if I lost both of them.

We heard the approach of screeching sirens and several ambulances drove up to the loading dock. Paramedics swarmed out and rushed to treat the many wounded. I was struck by the thought that Hamamachi's peaceful trading centre had been turned into a battlefield. I would never forgive Newhome for this, not ever.