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  Rescue Mission

  Doomsday's Child, Volume 1.5

  Pete Aldin

  Published by Pete Aldin, 2017.

  Rescue Mission

  (Doomsday's Child, 1.5)

  Copyright © 2017 by Pete Aldin. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of very brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Cover design by Juan Padron

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Rescue Mission (Doomsday's Child, #1.5)

  For all those real world heroes who work tirelessly to end modern slavery.

  Please keep reading through to the end of the book for bonus content

  In the "end matter" of this book, you'll find a bonus short story The Bridge (first published in the Veterans of the Future Wars anthology).

  As well as this, you will receive a special offer on the Doomsday's Child prequel novelette: Half Past Doomsday.

  17:14

  A deader has fallen into the rolls of barbed wire guarding the small town motel's entrance. The more it wriggles against its bonds, the more entangled the mindless thing gets.

  Elliot grunts a humorless laugh at its antics: the scene puts him in mind of the old story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby.

  It smells Elliot now, his sweat or whatever it is that deaders smell. It can't crank its head around because of the barbs in its hair, but its one free arm reaches back for him, clutching at the air as a lustful bleating escapes its rotting throat.

  He could walk over and end its predicament. He has his SIG P226 and his Aimrite spear gun, along with a tire iron taken from the long-cold pile up of cars a hundred yards behind him. He could investigate the motel beyond the wire—the closed rectangular ring of ground level apartments with its protected entry way. But there's no time for that shit. The deader won't thank him, and it won't be getting free to cause him any trouble. And anyone who was in that motel will either have joined the local Death Druids outlaw motorcycle gang or been murdered by them—or enslaved by them.

  The highway narrows thirty yards behind him where it meets the town of Inglebourne. On his side of the street are wide sidewalks and a length of businesses, beginning with a gas station and this motel. The opposite side is all houses, maybe twenty-five of them, their wide grassy verges lined with European trees and overturned garbage bins whose contents have been picked over and dispersed by wind and scavenging animals. Cloud cover keeps the late summer sun at bay while holding a light humidity in.

  Elliot moves on to draw level with the next building along the street, the pub, wishing it was operational. He ducks to crawl below the windows and straightens at the front door which stands open. Beyond is a carpet of leaves and local trash. And at least one body. He can see the legs. And he can smell it. There are more bodies on the street, long dead as far as he's seen so far. Some he passed earlier have been doused with gasoline and burned; others are crow-pecked and rotting like roadkill. There's no gasoline stink from within the pub.

  Should he go inside? Rest up here before his final push, or—?

  The decision is made for him in the form of engine noise. He can't immediately tell which direction it's coming from as it bounces around the buildings. He darts through the doorway and toward a window, gaze catching on the three bodies over by the bar, a middle-aged man and woman, and a child, a boy. They're partially obscured by fallen chairs but they're not moving—so far. There is a photo album on the floor near them, dark-stained like the carpet alongside it as if pissed on. Pulling his gaze away from it, Elliot knows it belongs to the three bodies as surely as he knows they are completely dead and that there's a high likelihood the Death Druids killed them.

  The album puts him in mind of other photographs, ones he saw at a Druid-trashed health spa. One in particular. A brother and sister, arms around each other's shoulders, smiling so completely that their eyes almost seem to glow.

  He snaps out of it, hunkering down at the window. The vehicles are coming from his left, from the end of town he was heading towards. There are sharp reports like backfires: one, two, three pops. Handguns, small caliber, maybe 9-mil. One part of him thinks danger while another thinks opportunity. He's been so short on weapons and ammo for so long ...

  A yellow 1980s Monaro screams into view, engine blaring, the driver downshifting in anticipation of avoiding the pile up just beyond the township. Another gunshot from out of sight and the car revs crazily, veers left away from Elliot's side of the street, mounts the curb and plunges through a low picket fence and into the pillars of a house verandah. As pieces of fence clatter into the high grass lawn behind it, two bikes come into Elliot's line of sight, road bikes. The men on them both wear leathers despite the summer heat, and German WW2 helmets.

  Druids.

  The thought is as hungry as the bleating of that deader in the wire.

  One biker is sliding an automatic back into his thigh holster so he can brake safely. The bikes swing into the gutter, the kickstands come down and the riders swing off their saddles. Both of them have a thigh holster and the one who fired has his automatic out again as he bolts through the knee-high grass and fence debris toward the crashed vehicle. The other tears off his jacket and drops it in the grass then pulls a wicked machete from a sheath on back of the bike. He flexes his back and shoulders, shouting cat calls at their quarry as he follows his mate across the wilderness of lawn. Back by the curb, their engines idle. The rumbling would mask anyone who wants to approach from behind. Anyone who wants to kill a couple of Death Druids.

  Elliot makes his decision quickly. Abandoning the spear gun and tire iron, he moves out to the pavement and then to the shelter of a parked car. The street is clear both ways, no other hostiles in evidence. He pulls the SIG and thumbs the safety, moves in a crouch-run across the asphalt to the trunk of an elm. Once more he checks the highway, sees nothing. Sighting along his SIG, he checks the yard. Both bikers are visible above the grass near the crashed Monaro, the one with the machete watching as his buddy drags someone from the wreck. Their backs are turned; they're distracted and confident and not expecting anyone to attack them.

  And Elliot needs those handguns.

  He moves forward with his own weapon in a two-handed grip.

  The biker's blade arcs up and down. There is one scream, a sound to curdle blood. It's cut short as the machete rises and falls the second time. The biker who dragged the driver out stands back to admire the blade's work. Blood flies on each upswing while the hacker lets out a staccato heh of effort with each blow. As Elliot reaches the middle of the yard, the onlooker's head snaps up toward him—and then snaps back as it takes a round through one cheek. The machete-wielder reacts faster than Elliot expects and throws himself to the side. Elliot's second shot goes wide. The biker rolls, machete abandoned, going for his own sidearm. But he is off balance, moving clumsily and he is surprised: it costs Elliot three more bullets to end him, but the biker never gets his own weapon out of its holster.

  Elliot swipes sweat from his brow with his left shirt sleeve, gaze quickly sweeping the house windows, the driveway, the street. He unclips the shooter's thigh holster, draping it over his shoulder as he moves past the Monaro driver's mutilated remains. That man wore col
ors too, Elliot notices: the Death Druids patch on his sleeveless denim vest is pretty messed up but Elliot has seen the design often enough to recognize it. Maybe he broke club code. Maybe this was payback among "brothers".

  Elliot has his SIG back in his own holster and the machete-wielder's Glock out of its. He's ready to run for the bikes when his eye catches on something through the shattered side window of the car. He takes two steps closer, then grunts in satisfaction.

  "Paydirt."

  It's a simple thing to reach through and hook the half-zipped duffel bag with his free hand. He puts it on the grass, checks the safeties of the two Glocks and slips them inside. They clatter against a bunch of other weapons, an Army rifle, pistols, magazines, and more.

  If the driver was a Druid ...

  He stands and checks street and nearby houses yet again, but there's still no sign of others, so he takes a moment to pull the keys from the car ignition. The key ring is heavy with metal: some of these keys look like they'd fit padlocks. Big padlocks. This will help him get inside their compound.

  There could be more treasure within the car, the trunk, the footwell on the passenger side, but Elliot has risked enough time and exposure to get this much, so he stands and swings the duffel bag around until the straps are over his shoulders. Awkward, but it'll hold.

  He jogs across the lawn to the bikes, stepping over the machete-wielder's discarded jacket.

  And gets his first surprise when he notices its colors.

  Biker patches were of little interest of him in the past minute of activity, his mind on getting these bastards dead before they did the same to him. But now he sees what he sees and he stumbles to a halt and swears.

  The Monaro driver was a Death Druid.

  The two men Elliot killed were not.

  17:26

  With the duffel bag rattling and shifting awkwardly at his back, he takes the Maggot Riders bike down an access road into the bushland behind the town. He cuts the engine, remaining in the hot leather saddle until he's sure no one living or undead is nearby. Nothing but black flies and crows; the ever-present birds seem to follow him wherever he goes.

  The duffel bag thumps onto the dry grass by the road and Elliot unpacks its contents onto a log, scattering a line of ants into confusion and mayhem. A .32 revolver, fully loaded, but no spare rounds. A lever action shotgun and fifteen shells. A full box of 9mm ammunition. Two Glock 18s fitted with biker-fashioned suppressors, a thigh holster and three spare mags.

  "Goddamn it," he whispers to himself. Has he walked into the middle of a biker war? Death Druids vs Maggot Riders?

  Superimposed across his vision is his memory of that photograph. The boy and girl with happy eyes, glowing eyes.

  The girl.

  What if other Maggot Riders have been to the Druid compound?

  What if she's no longer there?

  What if I got this close only to—?

  "Stop it," he tells himself, and completes his inventory.

  The pick of the bunch from the duffel bag is a Steyr bullpup assault rifle with its own reflex suppressor, two box mags and a shitload of spare 5.56 rounds rolling loose in the bag. The Steyr has a mixed reputation among users. Right now, seeing as he left his M4 at The Downs for their defense, he'll take what he can get.

  He straps the thigh holster to his left leg because of the SIG at his right hip. He pulls the mags from the rifle and from a Glock, jacks out the unspent round from each weapon's chamber, reloads the magazines to capacity. He field-strips the weapons, checking them over, reassembles them, reloads them, fits the Steyr's suppressor.

  Because of these suppressors, he's not worried about noise. He sights the rifle on a tree across the dirt road, fires one round, then another. Puts it down, does the same with the Glock. Nods with satisfaction.

  "Finally, some arms that are right to bear," he says and wishes for a moment that Lewis was around to groan at his lame joke. The moment is quickly gone.

  A fly takes an interest in his left eye. He slaps at it, connecting only with his own skin.

  Flies.

  Maggots.

  Those dead Riders back in Inglebourne might be missed by their buddies soon. If he has the slightest bit of luck on his side, they won't be between him and the Druid compound. Which is in exactly the direction they were chasing the car from, moron, he scolds himself and repacks the bag, adding the spear gun to it.

  The hacked-up body by the Monaro lowers the Death Druids' numbers by one, but as Waxer told him, there's still plenty more. Waxer gave up their remaining numbers as forty-one. Thirty-one males, ten females. Besides Waxer himself. Elliot zips up the bag and hopes that a club war means both sides' numbers are well depleted. He hopes they've wiped each other out and the girl will be standing there with bag packed so Elliot can saunter in, start up a car and drive her back to her brother. Easy peasey.

  "And pigs will fly south for the winter."

  He slings the rifle and tucks the duffel bag in tight behind the log. The bike's saddle is sun-heated—hot!—when he settles into it. The sky is now a brilliant blue above him. Four or five hours to nightfall. He brushes away the insistent fly while next steps run through his mind. If the cloud cover holds off, there'll be decent light tonight. But that's a long time to wait. Waxer used a book of maps to point out the exact location of the Druid compound; Elliot's persuasion was such that he's sure the man wasn't lying. The compound sits a hundred meters back off of the highway, five kilometers past Inglebourne. Not exactly hard to find. And not very far from here. He'll take the bike back to town and hike cross country a little ways inside the forest, following the road. Five kilometers will take him maybe two hours to walk that way. He checks his watch and then the angle of the shadows around him. In two hours, this summer evening won't yet have reached nightfall. But the shadows will be longer, enabling his black tee and khaki pants to blend a little as he sneaks in. And since he's heard no distant gunfire while in Inglebourne, he can only hope that the bike-car chase was an aberration, something happening unbeknownst to the Druids which has not put them on high alert.

  "Sure," he mutters, and, "Shit."

  Come what may, difficult or not, this is his course, this is his path. He will not be deterred. He will find a way.

  The bike starts with a roar, startling the crows into flight. He has taken so many lives in his days on this earth, so many. And he knows that tonight—if it means there's a chance he'll save one girl from the animals who stole her—tonight he will take more lives.

  He will take those lives gladly.

  19:33

  Abandoned cars and bikes litter a two hundred meter stretch of highway outside the Death Druid club compound. Brass casings too. And there are bodies, plenty of bodies, out on the road and in the bush here with him. Elliot stops counting at thirty. One of the bodies is a woman with long loose black hair, face down in some ferns. He turns her over and expects to feel better when he sees it isn't her. But he doesn't. This is all wrong; it's all very very wrong.

  Tinnitus whines in his right ear. Panic stains the edges of his vision in white. His lungs won't fully inflate.

  He's too late. Godamnit, he's—

  Stop!

  He takes control of his breathing, inhales for five seconds, holds it for five, releases it for five. Rinse, lather, repeat. Three times through the process, he's together enough to move forward. So he does, up to the edge of the tree line at the back of the compound, ten meters from the chain link fence. The light is dull with new clouds having come up out of the west to meet the sun, perfect for a guy sneaking around. There's no movement beyond the fence. No sounds—none of human origin anyway.

  Three bodies lie between here and there. And three deaders have found them, each hunched over a meal of their own, no need to share. There's no way Elliot is leaving them at his back: with an eye out for the living, he dispatches them with the Steyr, testing it again. It handles nicely, and the suppressor keeps the sound so low he's sure the breeze in the trees and the l
ocal birdsong will mask it.

  The compound is—as Waxer told him—an open rectangle long enough to park three semitrailers end to end, but not quite wide enough to turn one around. It's surrounded by chain link topped with barbed wire. The gate is a wide one, wide enough to admit large vehicles when fully open. It's open now, just a little, just enough for a man to slip through—a position someone might have left it in to entice and then shoot down an intruder. Elliot won't be using the gate. Waxer called it their clubhouse, but it looks more like a depot. Along the long edge of the rectangle closest to the roadway are six prefab buildings like site offices. Along the opposite side, the side he's on, there's another of these prefabs plus a tin shed and a steel-roofed garage with open sides. Three motorbikes are within this last structure—all toppled—along with a black van and a red utility pickup.

  Elliot moves around to his right, to the side of the perimeter facing the gate at the far end. Close to the fence, his rifle up, he feels the evening air, its sounds and tastes, its vibrations. The only human sound is the low chug of a diesel generator. Near him is a three-foot hole in the wire that he's almost ready to climb through. From the way the wire teases outwards, he's guessing it was made by a Druid escaping. Or was it one of their slaves? If it was Lewis's sister ...

  In the open ground within the compound, over near the gate, two more dead bikers are down. More imposingly, he counts eleven of them strung up in various places. All naked. Most are males; the one female hangs in the garage, lynched from the engine-hoist after she'd been raped. Maybe during. These bastards are psychos after all. Four men are cable-tied across the fence he's standing at, bound to the inside of the chain link, all facing out. Three have had their guts opened, and a solitary deader squats on Elliot's side of the fence, feeding on the mess that has dribbled through the wire. One man on the fence is alive. His guts are intact. He twitches from time to time, but there's no moaning against his gag. Maybe his silence is keeping the deader away; or maybe it's the offer of an easier meal.