John Birmingham - Without warning

‘I told you last night, Kip, that there were a lot of people involved in the Resistance. Some whackjobs, for sure – you know, commies and anarchists, just like you hear all the time – but a shit-load more decent folk. Guys who used to work for the media, the telecom companies, the government. Moms and dads.’

Barbara nodded as she carefully lowered Suzie to the ground. ‘You run along, princess,’ she said. ‘Find some paper to draw on. See if you can find Ronnie, she’ll help you.’

‘I like Ronnie!’ Suzie cried before dashing out of the office.

Kip stared at his wife. It was as though he didn’t recognise her. ‘You too, Barb? You were part of this?’

‘I’m sorry, Kip, yes. Well, I’m not sorry for being part of it, but I am sorry I had to keep it from you.’

‘But why?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Couldn’t you trust me?’

She smiled sadly. ‘It wasn’t safe, honey. If you knew I was helping Barney and the others, how could you have come in here every day and faced off Blackstone? You’re a lot of things, Kip, but you’re not a liar. You couldn’t have done it.’

Kipper turned on the lawyer. His head was an angry swirling mess of emotions. ‘You knew about this, Jed? About my family being involved?’

Culver nodded. For once he wasn’t smiling. ‘I’ve had contact with a number of opposition cells,’ he admitted. ‘Your wife’s was one.’

‘You had a cell?’ he asked Barbara. His voice rose with incredulity.

Barbara sniffed. ‘You make it sound like a spy movie, Kip. It was just me and some of the moms from school, and some of our friends. People I could trust.’

‘Jesus Christ…’

‘They’re down there, Kip,’ she added, pointing out of the window. ‘They’re coming. Because they have to.’

Barney walked over from the door and looked down on the massing crowd. ‘We’ve been waiting for this, Kip,’ he said. ‘Waiting for the right moment when those assholes downstairs would go just a bit too far. I thought they’d done it when they locked up the councillors, but people were still frightened out of their minds back then, willing to give up anything just to feel safe. That just isn’t so, now. They’ve had enough and they want their country back. The little bit they have left, anyway.’

Kipper was stunned. Never would he have imagined the day turning out like this. He had kept his opinions private, but he’d been expecting a bleak and wretched day.

‘We need your help, Kip,’ Barney went on.

‘Mine? What do you need me for?’ He waved a hand at the window. ‘Looks like you’ve got it all locked down.’

Culver answered his question. ‘We need you to shut off power to the city, and to Fort Lewis. And we need it done now. We have to knock the legs out from under these idiots before they have a chance to get to their feet.’

‘But they’ll have their own back-up plans,’ he protested.

‘Everyone has back-up plans,’ Culver smiled silkily.

‘What about it, Kip?’ Barney Tench implored. ‘You saved this city once. You can save your country if you act right now.’

‘Come on, honey,’ added Barbara. ‘You know what’s right.’

Kipper turned back and gazed out of the window. The crowd looked to be hundreds of thousands strong. He could see them bunched up at the bottleneck of Faben Point, a great mass of people emerging from the suburbs. He could see a similar crowd heading over the Evergreen Point Bridge to the north.

Telephones began to ring all over the floor, as voices rose in confusion, surprise and even awe. His secretary, Rhonda, came bustling down the hallway and into the room with Suzie trailing behind her. She looked surprised and delighted.

‘Barney!’ she cried out. ‘And Barb!’

‘Hey Ronnie.’

‘Hiya Ron.’

She turned her attention back to Kipper and said, ‘I’m sorry, boss, but it’s General Blackstone’s office on the phone. They desperately need to talk to you and the other department heads. What should I tell them?’

Kipper smiled.

The killer awoke, to find a stranger by her bed.

No, not a stranger, the guy who had saved her. The civilian in the room on the top floor. She could see him clearly now, as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes.

‘Where am I?’ asked Caitlin, her voice cracking in her dry throat.

‘London,’ replied the man. ‘A special hospital. They had to operate on you.’

‘My friend the tumour,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me he’s gone.’

The man shrugged. ‘I’m not a doctor so I don’t know. Or a relative, so they won’t tell me.’

‘Who are you?’

‘Name’s Melton,’ he said. ‘Bret Melton.’

Caitlin tried to lever herself up but found she had no strength in her arms at all.

‘Well, Bret Melton, thank you for saving my sorry ass. And to think I might have popped a cap in yours.’

He seemed to take that without offence.

‘You probably saved mine, Miss Mercure. I holed up in that joint after my vehicle got hit by an RPG. I was pretty much out of it, just trying to get as far away from the street as possible. If those guys had been even half competent they’d have checked and found me unconscious up top. Probably would have cut my head off.’

‘Probably,’ she agreed. ‘And my name’s not Cathy Mercure, by the way. That’s a cover. I’m sorry they felt the need to tell you that. My name is Caitlin.’

Melton took that without obvious concern, too.

‘In my experience,’ he said with a half-smile, ‘ladies who sneak into snake pits and twist the heads off vipers can pretty well call themselves whatever they feel like. You should know, by the way, that I’m a reporter. I’m not going to write about you. Not even going to ask what went down in that house. They made me sign a piece of paper that says I lose my nuts if I do. But I just wanted to get that out there for you.’

Caitlin felt a wave of lassitude steal through her body. She was aware of great damage that had been done. ‘Thank you, Bret,’ she said weakly. ‘But it’s all right. I’m retired now, a lady of leisure, as of two minutes ago.’

‘Okay then.’ He nodded and they lapsed into silence.

Her eyelids fluttered heavily, and she felt herself drifting back towards sleep. ‘Bret,’ she said, ‘did they get him? Did they get my guy?’

His voice seemed to come from far away. ‘I don’t know, Caitlin. They got a lot of guys.’

She forced her eyes open. For the first time she noticed the window off to the side of her bed. It opened onto a garden scene, although the trees were leafless and the grass had all died off.

‘What are you going to do, Bret?’ she asked. ‘Will you go home?’

He shrugged again. ‘What’s home?’

‘I don’t know.’

She started to fade out again. ‘I don’t know.’

They buried their dead according to whatever beliefs the departed had lived by. Gathered on the heavily damaged boat deck at the stern of the Aussie Rides, the surviving passengers and crew said their prayers or quiet goodbyes for friends and loved ones who hadn’t made it.

Julianne had never known Fifi or Pete to be in the slightest way religious, but while tidying Fifi’s quarters in the days after the last battle, she found an old Gideon’s bible, stolen from a motel somewhere, annotated by her lost friend’s large, childlike script. The story of Noah and his ark had come in for a lot of attention. That’s just like us, except for all the animals, she had written. Elsewhere, Please Lord, smite that asshole Larry Zood was followed in a different-coloured ink by: Damn! This prayer shit really works!