The Brink (5 page)

Alan had little need for such a system of atonement for the sin of surviving the disaster where others hadn’t. His parents had been dead since he and his brothers were very young and they hadn’t been on speaking terms since he’d moved out of the family home so many years ago. He often wondered if they were alive and if he should search for them but for some reason he never found the desire to begin. It wasn’t hatred or malice that he felt. It was more like a kind of reserved apathy that stopped him. Perhaps, he thought, he just didn’t care. Or that he was lying to himself and that he did care but was too afraid to admit it. Either way, the chance had never presented itself and if he saw them tomorrow in some settlement, alive and well, he’d be happy enough.

That line of thought passed another half an hour and the clock on the wall ticked slowly by until Reb’s digital watch chimed from beneath her blankets and woke her. She groaned, turned onto her back and coughed. Moll sat up and looked, considering the threat to her slumber, then dismissed it and lay back down.

“Oh,” she said as she sat up and pushed her knuckles into her eyes. “You’re back.”

“Yeah. Can’t get rid of me that easily,” he said.

“Don’t be so sure.” She untangled herself from under her blankets and sat on the edge of her bed, looking at the photographs pinned to the side of her cupboard. It was always the same ritual, he observed. A gentle kiss on the fingertips of her right hand, transferred to the face of her Mum and Dad. Then another for her younger brother. A third for her boyfriend. All dead. Gary had been with her the day Teague gave her permission to ‘patrol’ near her family home in search of them. All dead. Mum and Dad in a shallow plot in the garden, the brother in a fresher site next to them. Her boyfriend had stayed with them. Cared for them. Then died himself of hypothermia in her own bed with a note written in a trembling hand and sealed in a coffee tin. When Gary had moved the corpse to bury him, he’d found him clutching the container to his chest and given it to her. The note was now pinned next to the photo and all of them had been laminated in thick plastic to keep their fragile memories together.

“I’m going to grab a brew,” she said having made her offerings. “You want one?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

She stepped into her boots and stretched, pulling on her jumper and jacket and buckling her trousers closed at the waist. Teague’s people never slept without trousers or socks on and it meant that they never really switched off, never relaxed enough that they weren’t ready to jump up and fight if the need be. Even when they showered, their gear was always on a chair next to the stall with their rifles propped up alongside them.

Reb walked to Moll and scratched her belly as she lay there.

“Has he been mean to you?” she cooed. “Has Daddy kept you out too long?”

“Don’t,” he laughed. “You’ll make her soft. I need her to be an efficient killing machine.”

“Like this one ever kills.”

“You’d be surprised,” he replied. Reb looked at the smock hanging on its peg and opened her mouth to speak but Alan raised a hand. “No, for God’s sake it isn’t.”

“That isn’t coming out, you know.” She lifted it down. “Pockets empty?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll get you a new one.”

“Thanks.”

She was about to leave when she pulled back the duct tape and saw the entry hole. Then she shot him a glance and shook her head.

“You really are the independent type.”

“What do you mean?”

“You should see a doctor. Get it looked at. You don’t want it to get infected, Harding.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I will. Thanks.”

“I feel sorry for the other guy.”

Gary had gone whilst he slept and Reb had brought him a pint-mug of tea before heading over to the food hall to get something to eat before her shift. It meant that the bunks were empty and he could get in the shower stall and deal with the lump of lead still imbedded under his skin.

Taking his hunting knife with him, he undressed and set the water temperature to its coldest setting. He gave the blade a couple of passes on the sharpening stone mounted in the sheath and held it up to the spot where he could feel the bullet lying to the right of his sternum. Then, climbing into the shower, he forced himself under the freezing jet until he shivered and his teeth chattered. Placing a folded piece of cloth between them, he bit down and held the point of the knife to the spot.

“Jesus Christ,” he mumbled through the gag, closing his eyes as he pressed the point into his flesh. His jaw tightened and he squeezed his eyes shut, pushing until he had to stop from the pain. His vision swam and he felt sick. There was no other way though. If he went to the Medic they’d dig, they’d want to see the entry wound and know how in hell he’d survived it without a single scar. Then he’d have to tell them the truth: he couldn’t die, that he’d been given a drug that prolonged life, healed wounds, stopped starvation and dehydration indefinitely. The same drug given to the other volunteers down in the belly of Fort Longsteel when the disaster came. Who knows what would happen if he did?

He gripped the rail with one hand and took several deep breaths before pressing harder on the blade. He moaned in agony through the gag and felt his hot blood washing down over his cold body. He didn’t look. He kept his eyes shut tight and probed the wound with his fingers, working quickly before it closed up again. As if being pushed out by his own body, the bullet took little time in squeezing out through the opening and dropped to the floor, clattering on the wet tiles at his feet.

He held fast to the rail, dropping the knife as his head went light and his heart thumped in his chest so loudly he thought it was about to burst. The cold water brought him round quickly and when he opened his eyes he saw the blood, now pink, running down the plug hole, but the wound was gone.

He stooped down and, with trembling fingers, picked up the deformed slug of lead and stared at it intently.

“So much pain for one little piece of metal,” he whispered to it.

He washed and dried and put on fresh trousers before lying back down on his bunk, sipping the luke-warm brew. His thoughts wandered and he found himself reading the same line of the book over and over again without digesting a single syllable. What would it take to kill him? He wondered. He hated this line of thinking because it almost inevitably led to thoughts of torture and suffering without end, of being captured and, upon realising he couldn’t die, becoming a hideous play-thing for a sick and twisted sadist. It was his primary reason for keeping his secret safe and so far he’d run too many risks with it already. The smock. The blood. Why hadn’t he burned the thing before returning? Why bring it back?

Other thoughts crowded in and he determined there and then to take fewer risks with the truth. If it happened again he’d be more careful. Failing that, he’d have no choice but to leave Teague’s company and set out alone. He didn’t even know what would happen in the future. Would he get old? Would people begin to wonder why he never aged? There was so much he hadn’t been told in Longsteel, so much he still didn’t know about the drug he’d been given. Would he live forever?

“Yo, Harding - the Captain asks if you’re up for a patrol?” It was Gary at the door and his question shook Alan from his thoughts with enough force to make him jump.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he replied. “When?”

“Night-op. Meeting room at twenty-two-hundred.”

“I’ll be there.”

“You need to see Smythe. Apparently your rifle’s being decommissioned.”

“What? It was fine when I came in,” he cried, getting off the bed.

“The lens is scratched and it won’t pass a field test. You’re getting an old-school shooter instead.”

“What the hell is that?” Gary shrugged.

“Beats me. I’ll be getting one next so let me know what it’s like. It was great having this tech before the disaster but now...” He shook his head. “Anyway, catch you later. Me and Reb are in the squad.”

“Who else?”

“Steve, but he’s just pulled a long guard duty so he’s not too happy about it.”

“Okay, I’ll see you then.”

When Gary had gone, Alan got dressed and left Moll sleeping on her rug. She had a knack of finding him anywhere in the camp so he didn’t need her to follow. That was another source of worry for him. They’d never been apart since leaving the South and sharing this strange immortality meant sharing the same fears as well. He’d seen her riddled with bullets and shrug them off. She’d been speared twice and been running about moments later. Once a laser blast had taken off her hind legs and they’d regrown by themselves. And still she never left him, never wandered off without him; she stayed with him despite the risk and the suffering. She knew where he was. Where to find him. When he was hungry. When he was lost. Whatever the drug had done for him it seemed to have done more for her and the thought was both a comfort and a deep rooted, gnawing fear.

With this on his mind he reached the door and was about to leave when he turned and saw her standing beside him. His heart almost broke and he knelt down to nuzzle her face with his own.

“Just you and me, girl. Always,” he whispered as she licked his face and seemed to carry some of that worry away with her.

3

Smythe worked out of the warehouses and was a short, wiry man of about 40 years with a shining head haloed by a thin line of grey stubble. He wore thick lenses and oil-streaked overalls even though maintaining the weapons of Teague’s company was a relatively clean job.

As Alan and Moll entered, Smythe was bending over just such a rifle suspended in a system of clamps and racks that allowed him to work on the intricate parts and still fire the weapon at a target that stood near the far wall. He had a pair of delicate long-nosed pliers in one hand and a probe in the other, linked to a computer on the rolling table beside him.

“You wanted to see me?” asked Alan as he stood there, watching him tinker with the rifle as if he were a watch maker merely adjusting a cog here and there. With the pliers he removed the central lens and held it up to the light for inspection.

“Another one scratched and no replacements anywhere. They’re falling apart faster than we can find parts to repair them with. Things were so much easier with projectiles,” he said to himself. “Alan Harding, isn’t it? You just came back.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve been told you decommissioned my weapon for the same problem.”

“Yes, yes. Have a seat.” Smythe looked at Moll and shook his head, turning away to put down his tools and deactivate the rifle upon the rack. It hissed as the open cooling ports closed and the faint blue glow dimmed on its display meter. “Thankfully, the Captain has finally decided to follow my advice and begin issuing XC10 Carbines to your team. You’ll be the first to test them in the field but you can be confident that we’ve put them through their paces in the workshop.”

Smythe walked with a limp that Alan felt was slightly exaggerated to win some kind of sympathy from anyone unfortunate enough to witness it. He suspected that it had to do with his unwillingness to take part in the more manual labours Teague demanded of most of his team and a strong desire to stay in a humid workshop. In fact, the heating was so high that so many spare gas bottles had been piled near the door to his spacious workspace that the empty ones were almost as numerous. There were ration packs and bottles of fruit juice that Alan believed to be part of some kind of bribe or persuasion technique to keep him working on perhaps the most important part of the operation - the continual maintenance of their firearms. Was it justified? He wondered. He’d met people like Smythe before and they were somewhere on his table, near the bottom perhaps, alongside the willingly jobless masses and the persistent moaners. Either one believed that life owed them more than they got and never acknowledged that which they were given with any sense of gratitude.

Smythe returned with the XC10 in his arms, wrapped in a clean white cloth and giving the impression that the powerful 7.62mm carbine had just been born and was in need of breast feeding. He laid it in Alan’s open arms with the delicacy of a mid-wife and the faintest gleam of a smile on his cracked lips.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” he said. “The XC10s were top of the line before the first laser rifle came off the production lines. These babies were 3D printed down to the smallest part and could be mass produced at a crazy rate. They came pretty close to putting the classic AK out of business before the Forces decided to upgrade to pretty red light shows.” He said this with a sharp edge and Alan felt that the XC10 was to him his youngest: the forgotten child but favoured of the Father, a Joseph with a matte-black coat of one colour.

“How does it work?” he asked as Smythe stared listlessly at the bundle in his arms.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, come this way and I’ll show you on the range.”

He was led through a door on the other side of the work station to a long, bare room that’d been divided up into four narrow lanes by steel partitions. At each was a table, a pile of fresh paper targets and a pair of blue ear defenders. Each ‘range’ was numbered, 1 to 4, and Smythe led him to the furthest and the last.

“Have you ever fired a projectile weapon before?” he asked as Alan unwrapped the new-born.

“A few, back before the disaster. Just for fun. Nothing like this.”

“But you understand the principle?”

“I reckon so.”

Smythe shook his head almost imperceptibly but Alan saw it, wondering if the old man saw this exchange of a weapon as more of an adoption process than an issuing of equipment. If he failed, would he never be allowed to have a carbine of his own? Would he have to show that he could provide a solid, loving, dependent family for the thing before he’d let him take it home?

“Okay. Raise the weapon as you would the laser rifle and feel the weight,” he said and Alan did as he was instructed. The XC10 was much lighter than the laser and more compact, with a fore grip that allowed him to pull it in much tighter to his body. One of his main concerns with the rifle had been close quarter fighting and how difficult it’d been to move from room to room with its long barrel. This weapon made that problem a thing of the past.

“The stock has built-in recoil dampeners so you’ll only feel a slight shove when you pull the trigger but don’t go emptying a mag in one pull - the rig won’t cope and you’ll feel every shot.”

“Okay. Mags?”

“I’m going to start issuing 30 round mags but Teague believes he’s been able to locate 40 and 75 round box magazines. For now we’ve got limited stocks but I’m working on the tools needed to make our own. Try and recover as much raw materials as you can. And don’t leave empty mags behind.”

“I’ll do my best,” he replied. “Can I take a shot now?”

“If you must. Safety is the same as the laser but the XC10 can jam from time to time. We can’t train you for that one so you’ll just have to hope that when it happens you can learn how to do it quickly enough.” He was grinning as he said this and Alan didn’t like the implication. It was like the babe in his arms had a rotten family tree and that the doting father Smythe suddenly seemed more than happy to palm it off on him and be rid of the trouble.

He fired a few rounds, noting the almost gentle kick it gave him and was pleased to see that the grouping on the red inked man at the other end of the range was akin to his work with the laser.

“See, she isn’t so different. Just remember that you won’t be getting the standard 50 shots that the laser put out and there’s no recharging. Once you’re out of rounds you’re down to your wits and that dog of yours.”

He led him back out of the range, taking a chest rig down from one of the racks and handing it to him.

“I’ve preloaded this with magazines. Are you on patrol tonight?” he asked. Alan followed him back into the workshop, taking it off his hands. It was heavier than he was used to.

“Yeah. A night op.”

“When you get back remember to drop by and exchange your empties for fresh ones. You might find it a bit hard to adjust to consumable ammunition after so long with the laser but believe me you don’t want to be caught out with dead-man’s click.”

“What about a scope?” he asked, suddenly realising that the XC10 was only fitted with a standard holographic sight. He’d grown used to the night vision options the laser had given him and given that he was out that night he felt suddenly blinded by the change.

Smythe just shook his head. “We don’t have any for the XCs and we can’t jury-rig the laser rifle sights to these without the battery packs and that would make the weapon useless. You’ll have to do things the hard way.”

“What about goggles or a monocular?”

“I might have a monocular but all my goggles have been already issued. Wait there.”

Smythe disappeared into his personal store room and Alan tried the sling of the rifle, letting it fall to his side before taking it back up again. The laser had been with him since he’d first joined up with Teague and to no longer carry it felt odd, like he’d lost something that imbued him with confidence. It’d never let him down, never misfired and despite the odd refractions in the lens towards the middle of last week he’d felt happy with it. The XC10 however felt like an intruder, a changeling in the crib, an interloper and he wondered if he could make the adjustment without getting himself shot. Or someone else.

“Here we are,” said Smythe, returning. “The last monocular. It was dark in there so I tried it out. Seems to be okay.”

“Seems to be okay or
is
okay?”

“Oh, sorry, it’s fine. Just don’t get it wet.”

“What?”

“Keep it dry. I suspect it isn’t designed to be submerged but you aren’t going swimming are you?”

“I try not to but-”

Smythe waved him away. “You have your weapon and I’ve got work to do. Any problems, just pop back.”

“Problems? If I have problems it’ll be in the middle of a fire fight and I can’t see myself just ‘popping back’, can you?” he replied.

“I suppose not. Remember though that these beauties were top of the line back in the day.”

“Yeah. Back in the day which isn’t TO-DAY. I just hope it doesn’t get me killed.”

Smythe laughed and returned to examining the laser in the rack with his thick lenses and pliers.

“Just remember to keep an eye out for any brass sheets or lead or any metal really. If you don’t the next weapon I issue you with will be a machete.”

Alan thought of a witty reply but kept it to himself, taking both the XC10 and the vest with him as he left.

As he walked into the fresh air, Gary was waiting for him.

“So - let me have a look then,” he said, opening his arms. Alan passed him the weapon and let him cradle the thing. He was beginning to feel like perhaps he’d missed something, that he was supposed to be happier about this change to his personal equipment than he was. Gary seemed to think so, judging by his child-like expression as he cocked, chambered, ejected and just about broke the thing playing with it.

“Old-school sight, eh?” he said, staring down the rails with one eye.

“Smythe says he can’t rig it with NV.”

“He would say that. Probably too much like hard work for him. Reb and I still have the laser for this Op so no need to panic.”

“I’m not panicking,” he replied.

“Sure. You are a bit on the laid-back side of life, aren’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, very little seems to bother you out there. In here is another matter.”

“Why do I feel you’re talking about me when I’m not around?” said Alan, taking back the weapon, much to the dismay of Gary who seemed to want to adopt it himself.

“Because we are, Harding.”

“Thanks.”

“That’s what people do, Alan. Get used to it. Besides, we were kind of being nice.”

“What the hell does ‘kind of’ mean?”

“Reb noticed how cool you are when the lasers are cutting you up or the explosions are going off, but in camp-”

“Go on,” said Alan, feeling the proverbial hairs rising on the back of his neck. He never realised he’d made such an impression that required him to be the topic of canteen chatter. In fact, he’d thought he’d been more discrete, invisible maybe, but it seemed that he’d managed to achieve exactly the opposite result.

“Well, to put it bluntly, you give a shit what people think a bit too much.”

“How do I?” he cried a little too loudly and in a different key. Gary smiled and waited for the penny to drop. It did and clattered all the way down his spinal cord to his clenched stomach. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

“As Teague would say - don’t take it personal. I get it.”

“Do you?” said Alan.

“Yeah. You came here as a gardener and you’re trying to prove you’re something more. Truth is, you are, but you don’t need to chase it like a rabbit. You’re on patrol with us not because you’re ‘there’ yet but because you could be. One day. Teague sees potential and, without blowing smoke up your arse, we see it too.” His face flushed red and he started to play with the XC10 just to keep from meeting the compliment head-on.

“Thanks,” he managed to say.

“Yeah, enough bromance, eh? Think about what I said though and I’ll see you in the briefing room later.”

Gary turned and walked away leaving a hot-faced Alan Harding wondering how he’d been so conspicuous when he’d tried so hard to be a no-one, a faceless entity. He’d had the truth of it though - he cared what people thought about him, what they said when he wasn’t there and how he was perceived. Sure, Teague had picked up on his desire to be his own boss, Captain of his own ship, but maybe that was so he didn’t have to subject himself to the scrutiny of a team, of his peers.

But how to stop it? How do you stop caring? He thought about this as he walked back towards his bunk with Moll padding slowly behind him, her tail wagging slowly back and forth and her eyes looking straight ahead. Like someone who didn’t care. Like a confident beast with nothing to prove.

There were still a few hours to kill before the briefing and Alan spent that time rearranging his kit to suit the new weapon. Upon returning to his corner he saw that a new smock, still in its sealed wrapper, was sat upon his pillow with a sticky note attached. On the yellow strip was a smiley face drawn in biro and underneath, written in a very feminine script, were the words ‘LAST ONE. TRY TO KEEP IT IN ONE PIECE, HUN’.