Doomsdays child book 3 r.., p.1
Doomsday's Child | Book 3 | Reckoning, page 1
part #3 of Doomsday's Child Series
Reckoning
Pete Aldin
Copyright © 2022 by Pete Aldin
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For Liz and for Dave.
You are the village that helped raise this Child.
Reckoning
Pete Aldin
Contents
Foreword
Untitled
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part Two
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part Three
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Part Four
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
Afterword
Untitled
Half Past Doomsday
1
2
3
4
5
6
Foreword
I highly recommend you read the ebook Rescue Mission before reading this novel. It’s not a dealbreaker if you don’t, but several of these characters have their origins in that short novelette. You can read it on your phone or tablet in an hour. It’s available for $0.99 at several online ebook stores.
If you’re a read-to-music type, please get my Doomsday’s Child Spotify playlist going in the background: https://tinyurl.com/2yw6t7y2.
In this book, most spelling is American, since the story is told from Elliot’s point of view. Other spelling is Australian for local accuracy and authenticity (e.g., metre, the Centre, etc). Elliot uses a mixture of imperial and metric measurements because of various influences on him: growing up in the USA (imperial); a career in the military (metric); almost four years of living in Australia (metric).
In Australia, the car’s “boot” is its trunk. Tassie is an abbreviation for the large southern island Tasmania, but it’s pronounced Tazzie, and I’ve spelled it that way to avoid confusion.
Some Tazzie locales are true and accurate while others are invented, or embellished.
All flora and fauna references are true. Except, of course, for deaders … as far as we know…
“He’d make a lovely corpse.”
Charles Dickens
Prologue
North East Tasmania
March 27
Year 5, Post-Collapse
Craig was a doer.
And doers did stuff.
But if Craig hadn’t been so desperate to get laid, he wouldn’t be doing this.
No way. Uh uh. A resource run like this was dangerous—the most dangerous thing you could do when it sent you way out here, out from behind the moat, all alone, out at the full limit of the food you’d been given.
Five days and five nights he’d been at it. And he was more than ready to head home. It wasn’t really the dwindling food supplies or the fact he’d been sleeping rough and cold each night. The risk of injury was high. The potential for death was real. That’s why everyone else had stayed behind the moat and left him to it. Out here, Craig was vulnerable and tired and cold and, yeah, bored. He hiked his pack into a better position, bending tree branches aside as he took the straightest route back to the car, muttering to himself to keep his mind occupied.
“These bloody useless, pointless, dangerous resource runs,” he grumbled.
Scouring dilapidated homes and caravans, hoping to find a packet of ibuprofen. Scavenging through roadside trash and rusting traffic jams with their adult skeletons or half-rotted children that would be right there smiling their death grins at you when you opened a closet or the boot of a car…
“Bloody dead children.”
But bloody dead children were better at least than half-living children snapping at you and reaching for you, he supposed. Thank God that hadn’t happened this time out.
“Bloody freezing.”
The words came out in a cloud of breath to prove it.
“Bloody dangerous.”
Here he was, wandering around central Tazzie, armed only with a broom-handle spear and the crappy .22 that Caufield had given him. A .22 rifle and just three rounds, since bullets were in short supply now. Two years ago, three bullets would have been next to worthless if he was anywhere near the undead. These days, so long as Craig was careful, the broom handle would be enough. Well, as long as he didn’t come up against a biker, or that pot-head faction out west. The Westies grew and smoked their drugs—Dazza and Rita had both seen it on previous runs—but they were anything but chill. Craig knew from experience the bastards would shoot at you the moment they saw you.
They still have bullets? he wondered. Been a while.
He jumped and checked over his shoulder when a stick snapped twenty or thirty metres back. He stopped and strained his senses. Nothing to see, but there were sounds. A series of scratches—a rat, maybe, or a feral cat. Hopefully not dogs.
Dogs. Undead gimps. Bikers. Westies.
God, he hated resource runs. And honestly, if it wasn’t for the hope of attracting Rita’s interest, he wouldn’t be out here.
Craig pushed through more trees, moving faster than he wanted to, while telling himself things like “There aren’t any more bikers” and “Relax, old mate, relax” and “Find something nice for Rita”. When part of a wattle branch slipped from his grip and flipped back to slap him in the mouth, he swore loudly and asked himself for the hundredth time if anything was worth this crap.
“Doing is everything.” Caufield was fond of saying this and Craig repeated it aloud now as he snapped off the offending branch to punish the tree for assaulting him. “The human race needs doers to survive. Doers do and doers reap the rewards.” Then to cheer himself up—and put things in perspective—he added, “And I know what reward I want.”
Rita. Rita with that long red hair. Rita with those wide blue eyes.
With his vigor renewed, Craig pushed ahead, hearing the burble of Grey’s Creek ahead, picturing the Nissan he’d parked across it. Sunlight touched his right shoulder, peeking through the tree cover and failing dismally as a great source of warmth. His mouth stung where the branch had scratched his lip. Still, the run was almost over and if a cut lip was the worst that came of it …
“Bright side, Craig,” he whispered. “There’s been no crazies, no Westies, no dogs, no biters, no kids’ bodies.”
And not much in terms of finds, he added sourly.
Apart from a box of Mars Bars, a packet of ibuprofen and six boxes of Kleenex, all found in the back of a rust-pocked car, he’d unearthed nothing good that other scavengers had missed. At least tissues were valuable: people hated wiping their arses with grass and mushed-up printer paper. Rita would smile when he gave her a box. Oh, how she’d smile.
And picturing her, he smiled along with her.
Then scowled and swore when his boot skidded off an exposed tree root. Grumbling, he focused on the task at hand, trying to keep his feet away from snags and slimy wallaby droppings. The creek was soon in front of him. He felt proud that he’d found his way back without using a map, trusting his instincts. There, on the other side, was his Nissan.
And there was his Doberman. Lying under the car to shelter from the early morning dew, she heard him coming, her ears pricking. But she didn’t make a sound. She was a damn good dog, the only person from his former life still with him and she was well-disciplined: a single command of “guard” had been enough to get her to plant her butt at the back of the SUV when he’d left her.
A mist lay across the muddy brown water of the creek and he knew it was going to be bloody cold wading through it. But he was distrustful of the bridge downstream. In the year after the infection and the breakdown of society, he’d sneaked around on his own except for the dog. And he’d quickly learned that bridges were often watched by bad people. He knew of three people who’d been injured by booby traps in those early days then set upon by the scavengers who’d laid them. In he waded, gasping when the water rose above his boots. He slogged out until the stream was knee-deep, wishing it was clear so he could see where he was stepping. With his rifle over his back, he held the backpack to his chest, using it to balance, treading with care on the uneven bottom. A sudden drop in gradient brought the water to testicle-level and tears to his eyes. He gasped, breath catching until he got his lungs working by sheer willpower.
“Holy Christ!”
Maybe the bridge would have been better. Even getting his head shot off would be better than this, surely.
Push on, he told himself. Old Caufield wouldn’t complain. He wouldn’t wimp out. Nor would Rita.
Yeah, but Rita doesn’t have testicles.
Out in the middle, the current tugged at him when the water rose to his chest. He had to hold the pack above his head, hoping the creek bed wouldn’t dip further and plunge the r
There came a sudden stabbing pain in his side. Craig yelped, startling the dog. He stumbled sideways, staggering with the current until he found his balance and righted himself. The side of his stomach above the hip stung like hell. Heart racing, he looked back, but saw nothing in the water. What if it had been a gimp?
“That’s stupid,” he whispered aloud. “It was a stick. Just a stick, that’s all.” There were always submerged branches and similar crap in creeks. Shit it hurt, though. Maybe it was metal. Maybe bits of the bridge had floated down here. Maybe he’d get tetanus. “Dammit.”
He made it to the other side without further incident, knees sliding on the slick grass and weeds. The dog came to the bank with her stumpy tail wagging and ears down. He shoved her away, dropped the pack and lifted his shirt. Five distinct punctures, an arc with two punctures on one side and three on the opposite. A pattern. A bite pattern. Maybe. Or maybe he was seeing a pattern that wasn’t there, imagining things. Scaring himself. He lifted the shirt higher, probed the skin around the wound with a finger, wincing. If they’d been teeth, they were awful big for a freshwater fish. The skin was torn, drooling blood. No, no pattern, just something jagged and ragged that had caught him in the side as he’d brushed past. A branch could do this. His mouth was dry, but that was just fear. Surely. He looked out to the middle of the creek. Was that churning water there? Was there something under it, something trying to rise? Nothing did, though the water swirled and swelled. Just a branch. Or a garbage bag full of tin cans. A piece of that bridge. Or maybe a fish got him. Sure, fish were growing damn big these days.
“It wasn’t a gimp,” he insisted. “It wasn’t.” They were all gone, rotted away. But he gathered sticks and lit a fire and put a billy on it. The backpack with its dry treasures got tossed into the car while he waited for the water to boil. When it had, he washed the wounds as best he could, then poured the last of his homemade hooch into the punctures, stifling a sob. He sat by the fire a few more minutes and joked to himself that his sobbing was more about the loss of the booze than the pain. He didn’t laugh at his own joke. The dog looked on with concern until he told her they were going. She bounded to the car.
Five minutes later, he was twenty minutes from home, carefully navigating roads littered with detritus and brazen wildlife. And he was sweating.
Ten minutes, and he had to pull over to throw up the chocolate bar he’d eaten for breakfast.
Twenty-five minutes and he pulled into sight of Bournstowe. He had a fever and the dog had retreated to the back seat to keep away from him.
His SUV crossed the earthen bridge through the moat. The sentries pulled back the gate and waved him through with nothing more than a curious glance into the back seat, looking for goods. The dog whimpered and he ignored her. He pulled his car down the quiet side street behind the main shopping drag, intent on getting home, getting to bed. He was sick, that’s all, a spring cold caught while sleeping rough. He’d be better after a little shut-eye, some peace and quiet.
Quiet.
The street was quiet.
Apart from those on sentry duty, everyone else would be at breakfast.
Rita would be there. In the communal kitchen.
At breakfast.
Suddenly, Craig was hungry. And lonely. He wanted other people. He wanted Rita.
His tires screeched as he took a corner late, changing direction away from home and toward the eating hall. Let them check his car after breakfast and award him some kudos. He could gift Rita her tissues then.
Pulling up outside the Chinese restaurant which now hosted the communal kitchen, he shouldered the car door open and had to catch himself against it to stop from spilling out onto the asphalt.
Noise rolled out through the restaurant windows. The place was teeming.
Craig got out of the car. The dog flew out through the door behind him, shot past him like a bat out of hell and bolted away along the street. Craig couldn’t find the strength to care. It wasn’t the dog he wanted anyway. He got himself to the restaurant’s front door without anyone inside noticing his drunken stagger, and he leaned against the bricks by the entrance. His clothing was soaked with sweat, but it no longer bothered him. His mouth became slick with saliva. Apart from a little trouble balancing, he felt good now. He felt strong. The aroma of cooked food—the aroma of people—reminded him that he was hungry. Very very hungry.
As a matter of fact, Craig was ravenous.
He opened the front door and went inside where the food was.
Part One
Haunting
But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The Gospel of Matthew 8:12
1
October 25th
Year 4, Post-Collapse
05:23
“Well, all right,” Angie puffed, rolling onto her back. Twigs snagged in her jacket; her movement rattled the hedge above the hollow that she and Elliot lay in. “That was a nice way to greet the day.”
Elliot drew a lungful of crisp pre-dawn air and made a quiet noise of agreement.
Moments passed while they caught their breath, rearranged clothing, felt around in the dark for their small packs and weapons.
When Angie spoke again, her voice was a murmur and still unsteady. “You happy?”
Did she mean happy with the entire night’s activities, Elliot wondered, or with those of the past fifteen minutes?
Either way…
He reached around to flick a stone from under his shoulder and said, “Very.”
With the sun tucked behind the horizon, she was a soft smudge beside him. But he could imagine her adrenaline-laced grin—he heard it in her voice. He patted her thigh gently before flipping onto his belly. A second later, he heard and felt her do the same, rattling the bushes again. He raised his head until twigs pressed into his scalp through his wool cap. The terrain outside their hollow was moonscape-grey. A cracked bitumen road before them. A grassy verge and wire fence the other side of that. In the paddocks past the wire, cattle and sheep. A lone horse. Fifty paces to their right, an open gate and gravel driveway, bird-netted fruit trees along one side, poplars the other. Two hundred metres along the driveway, a farmhouse and outbuildings designated on their map as a Militia Homestead.
Angie’s hip and thigh had come to rest against his. “Got anything?” she whispered.
He scanned the area a second time, ears straining. Nothing but breeze. He whispered back, “Nope.”
“Me either.” She sighed through her nose. “Seriously don’t believe that no one’s seen or heard us tonight.”
“They’re all ass-clowns,” he replied. His breathing had slowed but his heart still pounded from the hard sprint they’d made along the driveway’s grassy fringe—and the other shenanigans that had followed in the hollow here. First time that had ever happened on mission. Definitely a first. And a sign of how much they could get away with inside of Jericho. “Complacent. And dumb as house bricks.”
Two hours earlier, working in wan moonlight, they’d found this hollow under the roadside hedgerow and marked it for falling back to. Then they’d approached the militia compound down that driveway. It had zero security besides its high fences. They’d cut a large gap in the wire, then located the quad bike that Driscoll had said would be inside. While Angie stood guard, Elliot had rigged a small gasoline-and-detergent bomb to go off when someone turned the key, big enough to seriously burn or even kill the driver—and maybe anyone standing right alongside. They’d then drilled holes in the compound’s rainwater tanks. Inspired by an old Mujahedeen tactic, they’d left a “night letter” attached to the gate, warning the militia living here to pack up and leave Jericho or suffer the same fate that the SERPs would. And the whole time they’d been inside that compound, no people had come out of the homestead to check on the yard, no dogs had been there to bark at them. The occupants were as arrogantly sure of their minor fortifications as their SERP masters were of Jericho’s larger ones. In the hours preceding this mischief, he and Angie had performed a dozen similar acts of sabotage around the area, all without detection.
