Tankbread 02 Immortal (20 page)

“He’s okay. He’s okay,” the hunter wheezed and then started chuckling. “Jesus! I think you scared ten years outta me, lady!”

Else ignored him and picked up her boy. To her sobbing relief there were no puncture wounds in his skin.

“He didn’t hurt him,” Else said through the tears flooding down her face.

“Nah, missus, that dog, he’s got enough of the retriever breed in him to carry prey in his soft mouth. Safe as in his momma’s arms.”

Sinking to her knees Else cuddled her howling boy, comforting him into silence. The hunter set to and skinned the dog, gutting it with quick and efficient knife work before butchering the body and wrapping the little meat that was there in banana leaves.

“You out here on your own?” he asked, sliding wrapped cuts of dog meat into a sack containing similar packages. He had been hunting dog before Else’s arrival and carried an ample supply.

“Are you from Jirra’s tribe?” Else asked, not willing to admit she had no backup to a stranger.

“I know a few Jirras. My name is Joel.” The hunter extended a bloodstained hand, which Else ignored.

“Billy and Sally, Jirra’s woman was Bindi. She died. They had a baby girl called Lowanna.”

Joel nodded. “You’re the crazy white girl, lost her baby in the flood last week?”

“I got him back,” Else said with an almost growl in her voice.

“Is Jirra with you?”

“He died. Lowanna is okay. I left her with some people.”

Joel lifted the sack onto his shoulder and gathered his spears in his other hand. “Sorry to hear about Jirra, he was a decent bloke. I heard he went with you because you were going to take care of his girl.”

“I did,” Else insisted. “I kept her safe, until the people on the ship took her away from me.”

“Boat people, aye?” Joel scratched his right knee with the toes of his left foot, leaning on his spears as he stood on one leg.

“I got Lowanna back, and my baby. I got everyone off the ship! The crew were evols, and they were eating babies to stay smart!”

Joel nodded. Little of what Else said made sense to him, but it was important to be polite. “So where is Lowanna now?”

“With Cassie, and the other survivors. Cassie can take care of her, feed her and protect her from Hob.”

“The girl is Murrai tribe. Jirra and her grandparents, they would want her to be with her people.”

“I tried to find them,” Else said. “The camp was empty. It’s not my fault!”

“We gone on walkabout,” Joel said. “Maybe you take me to the people who got Lowanna. Then I take them back to Billy and Sally. See if you people wanna go walkabout with us.”

Else nodded. Everything was going to be fine once she had her son back. She would take care of him the way she had taken care of herself for the last nine months. Now she felt a rising panic and sense of helplessness. Maybe she wasn’t good enough to take care of him on her own? With other people around, there would always be someone to hold and protect him. He would never be alone while she went hunting or scavenging for supplies.

“I’ll show you where they were,” Else said and together they walked off into the trees.

* * *

Else led Joel to the survivor’s camp via her house. She gathered a few items of her own. A bow and hunting arrows, a pack load of clothes, her boots, some food, knives, an axe, and a soft clip-on carrier for cradling the baby against her chest as she walked.

She kept an eye on Joel while she packed. He crouched in the dirt and wiggled his fingers, chuckling at the tiny baby who gurgled and kicked on the folded blanket Else had laid down for him.

When they left her house, Joel took the lead, finding Else’s trail from the night before in a few moments and loping along the forest floor with a mile-cutting stride that Else worked to keep up with.

Joel followed Else’s trail without pause. She had to call a halt after a couple of hours to tend to the baby. Joel stood, one foot resting against his other knee, and sipped water from a bag while she tended to her son. After a drink of water for herself, they set off again.

They heard the survivor camp before they saw it. Angry voices, male and female, loud enough to draw every evol within a mile to investigate the fuss. Else hesitated—rushing in with the baby strapped to her chest would put him in danger. Instead she shed her pack and bow, moving forward with an axe in one hand and the straight-bladed sword in the other.

Hob had been pushed to his knees, his arms raised over his head and lashed to a thick branch that ran across his shoulders, effectively shackling him to the wood. His head was bowed and blood hung in long scarlet drips from his nose.

“Rache!” Else stepped out of the trees and shouted above the angry voices. Joel followed her, standing beside her and regarding the noisy strangers with open curiosity.

The arguing died out and Rache nodded at Else, the blade of her salvage weapon resting over her shoulder.

“What’s going on here? Why is Hob tied up?” Else asked.

The tumult of voices flared again. Else raised her hands, motioning them to silence. “Rache, tell me. Everyone else, just shut up.”

“Hob attacked Anna. So now we’re gonna kill him,” Rache announced. The holders started shouting and Rache turned on them, yelling her own anger in their faces.

“Shut up!” Else yelled. “Who is Anna?”

“I’ll show you.” Rache pushed through the crowd. Else followed, the people parting to allow her passage. Under a rough shelter a woman knelt, skin stained dark with the oil of the engineers, her head bowed.

“Anna?” Else asked, crouching down. The woman looked up, her eyes wet with tears. She shook her head and pulled a blanket back, showing a girl, her naked body bruised and battered. Else had read of young women being described as ripe fruit. Anna wasn’t ripe. She had a lot of growing to do before she would be more than a girl whose body was changing with the onset of puberty.

“Is she dead?” Else asked.

The woman shook her head. “She’s just gone away,” the woman whispered. Her voice cracked as she reached out and stroked a strand of red hair away from the girl’s unblinking eyes.

“He raped her,” Rache said softly. “He said . . . He said she’d had her first bleed so she was ready to breed. We were out looking for food and heard the screaming. By the time we got back, he’d done this to her.”

Else stood up. The eyes of everyone were on her and she didn’t know what they wanted. “What do you want me to do?” she asked the grim faces.

They all spoke at once, their anger and hate raining down like physical blows on Else. She wrapped her arms protectively around the soft cloth carrier that held her baby. He started to grizzle and she slipped the straps off. Sitting cross-legged, she wiped him clean and then fed him.

After a few minutes the people quieted down. Else ignored them until there was silence.

“Don’t all speak at once. One person speaks. Then someone else speaks. The rest of us, we listen,” she said. “Sit down, all of you.” They did, slowly at first; then they all made a space on the ground and sat down.

“You,” Else nodded at a man in the group, an engineer by the painted nature of his skin. “What do you want to say?”

The man stood up immediately. “Kill him!” he shouted, and others echoed the sentiment.

“One person speaks!” Else shouted and the crowd subsided.

“You,” Else indicated another man.

He stood up and looked about. With a shrug he said, “Kill him. We can’t stay here and we can’t lock him up anywhere. What other punishment is enough?”

Instead of exploding into an angry uproar the group simply murmured a mix of assent and disagreement. Else moved the baby to her other breast; he didn’t seem hungry anymore and just moved against her. “Who’s next?” she asked. Two men stood up and one sank back down again, poised to rise when the opportunity presented itself.

“He’s gotta die. You let this sort of shit happen and what next? What about when he kills someone? Feed him to the crew I say!”

The man nodded, agreeing with himself. Sitting down again the next fellow sprang up. “She’s just a kid! You gotta make an example of him and maybe that means killing him. Let’s face it, if we send him away, he’ll just come back and kill us. If you don’t want to kill him, punish him so that he knows what he did was wrong. Make him do hard labor or something.”

Another man shouted without standing up. “He’s got to be killed, make an example out if him. Do it so the next bastard knows what he’s in for!”

A woman stood up. She waited until the voices around her had died down. “Don’t we need him?” she asked. “He kept us together on the ship. Stopped everything falling apart. He hurt that girl and it breaks my heart. But I think we need him.”

A younger woman who sat with the fishermen stood up and put her hand on the holder woman’s shoulder. “He’s hurt Anna and none of us will ever trust him again. I don’t want him to die, but he’s gotta pay for hurting her. What does her mother want?”

The engineers muttering grew in volume. “I say we brand him and then exile him!” one of them shouted.

“Kill him!” another voice demanded.

“What does the girl want? What does her mother want?” Voices around the group picked up on the idea and quickly drowned out those calling for execution.

“Bugger of a situation you’re in,” Joel said, crouching down next to Else.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted quietly.

“Maybe you’re gonna need him, for a while at least. Maybe them fellas sayin’ he’s gotta be killed are right. Or maybe them that says he should be turned out on his own, they’re right too.”

The discussion continued; suggestions and arguments were made for a range of punishments. Hob remained silent through it all. The woman who had been tending Anna was brought forward. She shivered and stared at the ground and would pronounce no judgment, only saying, “He hurt my girl. He hurt her so bad.”

The voices calling for Hob’s execution continued. When Joel unpacked the fresh dog meat and started grilling it over the fire, it was agreed to take a break from the discussion to eat.

Else took Joel’s water bag and knelt down in front of Hob. “You haven’t said anything,” she said.

Hob lifted his head. One eye had swollen shut; the dried blood and marks on his face gave him an evol-like appearance.

“Your problem is you think this fuckin’ world is still safe. Y’think that old laws, old ideals and principles apply.

We’re livin’ in the new dark ages. Ain’t nothin’ gonna make a damn bit of difference now. Not in your lifetime and sure as fuck not in mine.”

“What would you do, if they asked you to pass judgment?” Else asked, tipping water into Hob’s mouth. He drank greedily and panted a bit before replying.

“I’d fuckin’ congratulate me on seein’ the bigger fuckin’ picture. You think that being nice and talkin’ about shit is gonna save the human fuckin’ race?” Hob stretched his neck against the branch that pressed down on his shoulders.

“I’ll fuckin’ tell ya what. If you don’t get every fuckin’ one of these cunts bred, we’re fuckin’ extinct.”

“She’s just a child. It wasn’t about breeding a woman. It was about you forcing yourself on her.”

“Forcin’ myself?” Hob chuckled and spat blood on the dirt. “Ya shoulda seen the way she’s been lookin’ at me. Hot little cunt like that, she wanted it. Sayin’ I attacked her is just engineers talkin’ shit.” Hob shuffled forward on his knees and whispered, “She fuckin’ loved it.”

Else set the water bag down, Hob’s sudden erection pressing against her thigh. She lifted her gaze, staring him in the eyes, smiling gently. She slid her hand around his pulsing shaft, moving her grip down until she cupped his swollen testicles and Hob grunted and pushed forward against her wrist.

“I read a book once, it said that scars are what remind us that our past is real,” Else murmured, her hand working Hob up and down.

“Yeah . . .” Hob said with a satisfied grin. “Thas’ right. We all got scars. So she’ll be a bit more careful next time. She’ll get over it.”

“There are those who say that you are an asset, so you can’t be lost. There’s those who say that you are dangerous and should be killed. Trust is going to be important in a group like this and what happens if your kind of thinking gets passed on through the genes. I know an expert on selective breeding and I’m sure she would agree.” Else spoke softly, her voice as much of an arousing caress as the steady motion of her hand.

Hob’s eyes fluttered closed as his mouth opened in a deep groan. Whatever visions of sexual conquest he was seeing behind his eyelids were riding the sensation of Else’s smooth stroking driving him towards a climax.

She watched his face, felt the convulsion of his orgasm and felt the hot splash of his fluids on her arm. In that moment where he was completely lost in the fire of his masculinity, she swept a knife up behind his ball sack and with firm pressure and an upward slicing motion she severed everything. Hot blood sprayed, painting her shirt and face. Else raised her hand, showing Hob his wilting manhood, now lying across her palm. The shock drained the blood from his face and his next breath was already a scream.