Chapter 17C: Get To The Trees

Pinned in a tree as floodwater rises, John and Jessie fight for their lives and discover sometimes struggle costs everything.

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About halfway to the tree’s top, its limbs thinned as they grew in number. Jessie and John found one that would support them and shuffled out along it, the other two followed up and into positions by the trunk. Dylan wrapped an arm around the trunk and aimed his rifle down where the gangers were heading straight towards them.

He fired into the ground in front of them, but they spread out and came on, flitting in and out of saplings. The first water now lapped the fence at the foot of the hill as the huge surge behind pushed all before it.

The gangers needed the shelter of a big tree, too, and they weren’t in a sharing mood. They levelled their autos and fired continuously as they raced to their left behind a sapling thicket.

They were now out of the line of sight for Dylan, but even in the fading light John and Jessie could see them clearly enough from their perch towards the end of the branch. They quickly straddled the limb and fired into the group.

Two men screamed and fell. A third staggered into the open clutching his chest and Jessie finished him.

“How many left?” she asked over her shoulder.

John looked either side of the tree. “Not sure, three I think, maybe four.”

“Yeah, I counted six coming up the hill, so another three sounds right.”

She’d only just said it when the three remaining gangers burst from cover and ran further again to their left, firing towards the centre of the tree they could now see more clearly.

Jessie levelled her rifle to spray the fleeing group. “They’re trying to get a better view of us.” She lost sight of the gangers as they made the shelter of another thicket.

The gangers now switched their attention to Hugh and Dylan, sitting side-by-side against the tree trunk’s sparse foliage. Both were painfully aware of their vulnerability and peppered the thicket with panicked gunfire, but the thicket’s camouflage favoured the gangers and Hugh was first to be hit, slammed back against the trunk by a hail of rounds in his chest. Dylan fired back, blindly and one-armed as he threw a hand out to hold his friend from slipping into the rising water below.

The gangers advanced with confidence now and made the base of the tree unscathed. Dylan meanwhile had taken several shots in his upper thigh and stomach. He bent forward and let his rifle dangle as he pinioned Hugh against the tree with his other arm.

One of the gangers, emboldened by their successful attack, stepped out from the tree and aimed up at them. But now the gangers had come in closer, John and Jessie could once more see them. They fired together and the ganger staggered backwards before falling headlong into the building flood sweeping through.

The water level rose by the moment now as the tidal wave pushing it crashed into the hill’s base. The two remaining gangers chanced desperate bursts up into the foliage before darting back behind cover, shouting, “Get out, get out of the fucking tree!”

“Come and bloody get us,” Jessie yelled back as she and John spattered the base of the trunk with gunfire.

All went quiet.

Jessie looked over John’s shoulder to check on Hugh and Dylan. Both were panting; their clothes had soaked red and blood trickled from their mouths.

“Oh shit,” she swore and shuffled along the tree limb towards John.

He’d already started moving in ahead of her. “We’re coming, guys, just hold on.” He turned back to Jessie. “Where have those bastards gone, can you see them?”

“Yes, fuck it, they’re climbing!”

The gangers were scaling the tree, rifles slung across their backs, pistols clenched between their teeth, stabbing knives into the thick bark for purchase as they came on like boarding pirates.

Up ahead of John, Dylan had roused himself and peered around the tree.

“Where are they?” Hugh managed between gasps, “can you see the bastards?”

Dylan nodded slow and heavy. He turned around to Hugh, put a hand on the man’s shoulder and leaned forward till their foreheads touched.

“This is it, mate,” he said, his voice a soft wheeze. “See you in that other world I told you about, the one you didn’t believe in until just recently.”

He dropped his rifle into the flood, whipped out his pistol in one hand and hunting knife in the other and then, tucking his good leg under for the launch, pitched around and down the trunk to fall on the gangers, shooting as he fell. Hugh, one hand strained across a burbling red fountain at his chest, could do nothing but stare on in shock.

The gangers steadied themselves on the embedded knives while they snatched automatics from their mouths to fire back at the body bearing down on them.

Unimpeded by injury, their aim was good. Dylan De Saunt was dead before he slammed into the first of them. The ganger swung out under the weight of Dylan’s body and let it slide away into the tidal wave’s boiling water as it rampaged uphill below them.

A grotesque, animalistic howl emanated from somewhere deep inside Hugh. He slumped over and sobbed.

John reached him and put an arm about his shoulder. Once he’d steadied the man he leaned out and tried to shoot around the tree. It was no use, the gangers hugged tight against its trunk and his shots flew past them.

Jessie moved up behind John and stood. She slung her rifle and leapt above the two men onto the tree trunk. Digging her fingers into the peeling bark wherever its thickness offered a decent purchase, she clambered up and around. As she came into the gangers’ view they fired on her and she flinched back from their line of sight. They paused one at a time to reload and give covering fire while the other climbed.

Jessie swore. In a few moments, the gangers would be in a position to fire down on John and Hugh. She holstered her pistol and unslung her rifle with one hand, meaning to lean out and blast them both away.

But luck was not with her. One of the pieces of bark she had a foothold on gave way and in the panicked moment after, she had to bring both hands to the tree for balance, dropping the Steyr in the process. She looked down as the rifle hit a branch side on, spun and fell whirling into the flood.

She banged her head against the tree trunk. “Fuck!”

The gangers witnessed her rifle’s demise and laughed.

“Come on, bitch, show us what you’ve got now!”

Jessie leaned back from the tree and growled low. She took one quick, deep breath and a desperate gamble on finding solid handholds as she frantically clawed her way into a position she knew to be a metre or so above where she’d last seen the gangers. She whipped her pistol out, eased it around the tree and looked down.

But the gangers were working as a team. One had continued around the trunk of the tree to get a bead on John and Hugh. The other was aiming his pistol straight at Jessie.

She ducked back as the first shot glanced the barrel of her weapon and sped on into the forest behind her, burning a long sear wound across the top of her index finger near the knuckle.

“Hey, lady, where did you go,” the ganger taunted. “Come on back!”

If you insist, she whispered as she slid down to a small limb, once more praying it would hold. It did, and, gripping another solid branch with her free hand, she flung herself wide to see her quarry still training his weapon up at the spot where she had just been. He wheeled about to re-aim, but she’d already emptied five shells into him. He fell against the tree bole, his arms slipped beside him and his backside bent away as gravity took him to the flood.

Jessie swung around looking for the other ganger. He’d disappeared beneath the foliage. She shouted below her.

“John, watch out, he’s coming around!”

“I’m on it.”

She turned back to where rustling betrayed the ganger’s position. She took aim and fired, moving the barrel around between each shot to cover the area. One, two, three, four, five times she pulled the trigger and the pistol exploded. A mini storm of leaves and twigs snapped and flew away.

A snicker sounded from within the target zone. “Nice try bitch, but I’m still here!”

The tree shuddered slightly. Jessie looked down. John had leapt from the branch where he had by now secured Hugh, to a smaller limb he gripped in his left hand. He hung there in midair as he sought out the last ganger.

“I’m still here too, arsehole,” he snarled when he spied the man exposed beneath the foliage that had concealed him from Jessie.

John’s rifle bucked about as he dangled from the branch he gripped with one hand while firing with the other. Most shots missed but enough found their mark. The ganger’s head jerked back and he fell along the limb of the tree he’d sat on. He brought one shaking foot up, but it slid across and kicked his other ankle away. Both legs now shot out that side of the tree limb while his back went over the other.

His arms twirled and his hands stripped bark as they fought for a grip, but the weight of his upper body won. His legs shot up vertically, peddling air as he dived headfirst into the rushing water.

John slung his rifle over one shoulder to free both hands for the task of climbing back on the branch he’d suspended from. Once there he crawled back into the centre of the tree where Hugh lay.

Jessie had already slithered down to the man. “You okay?”

Hugh gave her a thumbs up. “Never better.” More blood spilled out his mouth as he spoke. “Did you get those ganger pricks?”

She nodded.

“All of them?”

“Yes,” she confirmed, “all dead.” She bowed her head and began to weep.

He leaned over, picked up her hand and gave it a gentle shake.

“Hey, no tears, okay?”

But she sobbed on anyway. She lay her head against his chest and gripped his arms and howled out her grief and rage and pain. Hugh’s own tears mingled with the blood now streaming from his chin and the red mess ran into her hair.

John could only sit and look on. Any other time he’d have fumed with jealous rage over this show of affection, but this wasn’t any other time. This was a time quite unlike any other. He looked into Hugh Godswold’s face, hung his head, and joined them in weeping.

The past few days had torn their world apart and slung their minds to spin like tops through the black reaches of the universe. Now they were all dying and it didn’t matter. Through his tears, John could see the water lapping just a metre or so below. Even in the gathering dark, he could see it rising moment by moment.

And it just didn’t bloody matter.

“You two have to go! Quickly.” Hugh was shaking Jessie as he spoke. “Get up higher in the tree, fast. It’s your only chance.”

The obvious logic wasn’t lost on any of them. Hugh was shortly going to die, from his wounds or the rising water. Still, neither made a move to leave him.

Godswold’s face twisted with the effort of yelling. “I said, GET!” Still, neither moved. Hugh growled and shook his head. He gathered his remaining strength into one last entreaty.

“Look, I’m done here, but you two can go on. If you survive this water maybe you can make it into town, carry on for me and Dylan. Maybe that bloody town can be saved yet if good folks like you survive.”

Jessie stopped sobbing. She took the crucifix from around her neck and leaned forward to slide it in Hugh’s shirt pocket. She patted the reddened place gently.

John rose slowly. “Okay, mate, we’ll do what we can. It just doesn’t seem right leaving you.”

“Don’t be foolish, John. I can’t move and I’m going out fast anyway. You two staying won’t help. I’ll just feel guilty and you’ll drown, and Keemon and his fuckers will have won!” He coughed fresh blood and went on. “Leave me here for the flood. I need to go and take care of that damned fool Dylan, anyway. He’s gone on to that other world he kept telling me about. He’ll be getting into all sorts of trouble on his own. He needs me to look after him.”

It was the last thing Hugh Godswold said. He jolted upright a moment, shuddered, and slipped sideways from the tree as the light left his eyes. Jessie’s fingers slid along his departing face as they let him go.

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