Three Days West Read online

  THREE DAYS WEST

  A SOTERIA Short Story

  L J Duncan

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Afterword

  Chapter 1

  Acid rain had kept most people inside for days.

  Those that braved the relentless downpour of carbon-heavy rain put themselves at risk of a painful rash. At worst, their skin bubbled and blistered and their lungs swelled with inflammation. Adrian Peralta needed to be on the other side of town. He had no more time to wait. Holed up inside his family home, he had put off leaving for hours, hoping the weather would clear.

  It didn’t.

  In the previous two days, the Humanist Union had shut off the mains water supply, probably for good. The Union was systematically removing citizens from neighbourhoods it no longer wanted inhabited. Residential control, they called it. They started with the power supply a month before. Those with generators, solar powered batteries and even torches resisted the Union’s attempt to smoke them out, but with no water supply, the outer neighbourhoods were no longer a realistic place to stay.

  Adrian packed enough supplies in his tattered hiking pack to get him across the city and out into the Indian Ocean. He stashed a few pairs of jeans, a hoodie, a change of underwear and some snacks into his bag. The syndicate had told him the trip would take three days. The trip was scheduled to leave that very afternoon.

  Australia was imploding. The country’s political system had crumbled; the dust was yet to settle. The Humanist Union rose from the dusty ashes of demolished democracy, replacing it with the oppressive dictatorship funded by dirty mining money. It had recently stripped the federal and state police of all authority. In their place, they introduced the heartless Humanist Union Army. Their mission to convert all residents to Catholicism proved more difficult than they wanted to accept. Citizens put up a fight. Citizens clung to their diminishing rights.

  Citizens died for their beliefs.

  All international travel had ceased. The Humanist Union severed all international trade ties. Permanently. Now, in the early months of the Soteria regime, the Union started constructing concrete walls around the entire landmass of Australia and its neighbouring countries. Australia in its geo-political sense, no longer existed. New Zealand no longer existed. Indonesia faced the brunt of the merciless Catholic conversion. All land within the borders became known as the Empire of Soteria.

  Adrian needed to get outside of those borders before they trapped him inside his own life for good. The window in which escape seemed possible was becoming smaller by the day. The Union built the northern walls first, crossing through Thailand’s narrow and mountainous landmass. Next, they planned to build walls in the Pacific, cutting through New Zealand and Fiji with an impassable, concrete barrier. The wall’s plans were not yet complete in the waters northwest of the Australian mainland. A shipping route through the Indian Ocean, south of Java, marked the last remaining uncontrolled access out of Australia.

  Or so Adrian had been told.

  He had paid close to six month's wages to the smuggling syndicate he found online – a month before the World Wide Web crashed. Someone embedded a virus into server systems around the world and like a digital pandemic, it used the Internet’s global network to travel from server to server, deleting all online and cloud-based data, worldwide. The fickle global economy crashed. Communication and trade came to a standstill. Within the boundaries of Soteria, the Humanist Union scooped up the desperate and unemployed, offering them job security. People of all ages were shipped off to the vast expanse of the Indian and Pacific Ocean’s to build the walls. Putting aside the smoke and mirrors and potent propaganda, it was blatant slave labour.

  Rumours from frightened citizens began to circulate. Whether it was conspiracy or paranoia made little difference. The world had changed for good. Those rumours suggested that Soteria’s own Humanist Union had designed the virus that wiped out the Internet, deliberately disconnecting Soteria from the outside world. If anyone voiced those rumours in public, they disappeared from their homes without a trace.

  Citizens were voiceless and scared. Citizens had lost all rights.

  Soon, citizens would be trapped forever within the walls of Soteria. Adrian couldn’t let that happen. He needed to get out before it was too late. He needed the outside world’s help.

  Adrian came across the smuggling syndicate through the dark web. According to their online itinerary, they used a fishing boat to traffic fleeing citizens outside of Soteria for the right amount of money. That right amount of money scraped the barrel of Adrian’s entire savings. He convinced himself it was worth it.

  After his payment had gone through, he received a hand-written letter telling him he would receive further instructions when the time was right. The right time was 11:00pm on a Thursday.

  It was a moonless night. Thick clouds swamped the stars. Adrian sat in the darkness of his living room, under the dull glow of torchlight, when he heard three faint knocks on the front door. He opened the door with caution to see the dark silhouette of a hooded stranger. Under his black hood he wore a white, disposable facemask that covered most of his face. Adrian could only just make out the stranger's eyes. They were dark and blood-shot.

  “Hilary’s Boat Harbour,” he said with a deep, hoarse whisper. “6:00pm Saturday. Password is Salvation… Pack light and don’t be late.”

  He didn’t wait for a response. He didn’t acknowledge Adrian’s faint nod of understanding. Instead, he had turned around and ran off into the darkness, leaving Adrian standing alone on his front porch.

  That was two days ago. It was now 4:00pm Saturday. Adrian had two hours to get to Hilary’s Boat Harbour, north of Scarborough Beach. He had two hours to cross the city in torrential acid rain and meet up with his last remaining hope of getting out of Australia before it was too late.

  He knew they wouldn’t wait for him.

  Adrian considered driving. Like his parents and so many others around him, his neighbours were deceased. They had become victims of the unknown sickness that seemed to plague the nation. They had an old Mazda stored in their garage next door. It was unregistered and, because of the Japanese make and model, it had since become outlawed. If the Union caught him driving a banned vehicle he would never make it.

  Adrian weighed up the pros and cons. Driving meant shelter from the rain, but it also brought him a great deal of unwanted attention. The Humanist Union had been patrolling the outer suburbs, looking for non-compliant residents. If they flagged down his getaway vehicle, it would lead to interrogation and most likely arrest.

  The car couldn’t be the answer. It was too risky.

  Adrian continued to wait.

  Thirty minutes passed. Adrian was restless. Far from a believer, he prayed anyway. He begged for the rain to cease. It didn’t. His impatience had him pacing the small hallway. Floorboards creaked under his frantic steps. He ran his hands through his long black hair and massaged his cheekbones. It was something he often did when anxiety climbed out of the pits of uncertainty. He had shaved the day before, to prepare for his journey, but already thick, black stubble scraped against the palms of his hands. He peered through the front window and watched the churning, hypnotic black clouds shift across the afternoon sky.

  The car was the only option.

  “Fuck it,” he said aloud. “I’m taking the car.”

  Adrian threw on a waterproof jacket, pulled the hood up over his long, greasy hair and zipped the jacket tight. He grabbed his hiking pack filled with
supplies and opened the front door. He turned around and cast one final look over the family home in which he had grown up. He closed the door and in his own way, said goodbye to all of it. Now wasn’t the time to get nostalgic.

  The distance from the protection of his front porch to the neighbour’s garage door was a little over ten metres. The rain bucketed down, thick and fast. He considered running, he considered retreating. Then, with no further consideration, Adrian just went for it. He took four quick steps to gain momentum and then cleared the porch guardrail, landing in the waterlogged grass beside the garden bed. The rain hammered against the outside of his jacket, deafening through the thin, waterproof material. He took three large strides across the soggy lawn and reached his dead neighbours’ veranda.

  “Okay,” he whispered. “You’ve got this.”

  Stepping round the overgrown patch of weeds that once resembled a manicured front garden, Adrian reached for the brass door handle and turned it.

  Locked.

  He had limited options. Break in through the locked garage door or break into the house and access the garage from the inside. Adrian could count the number of residents still living on the street on one hand. The risk of being seen by other citizens didn’t bother him. The risk of being seen by the Union did. He needed to be fast.

  The door was closest. It seemed like the most logical first choice. Adrian took a step back. The hammering rain cascaded off the overflowing gutter, missing him by centimetres. He repositioned himself and charged at the door with his shoulder forward. He crashed into the door with the full weight of his body and it didn’t budge. He bounced off the hardwood, wincing as pain shot up through his shoulder joints and into his neck. It always seemed doable in the movies, he thought.

  Maybe the second choice would be easier.

  He pulled a black torch from his bag. Similar in length to his forearm, it would serve as the perfect tool for breaking a front window. He turned around and gazed down the empty street. The whole neighbourhood seemed deserted, eerily quiet. His heart rate increased. Even though he knew his neighbours were dead, he felt like he was doing something he shouldn’t be.

  Choosing the window closest to the garage, Adrian swung the torch backwards to build momentum. He hit the window with full force. Glass shattered as shards rained down around him, peppering the wooden veranda with a sea of hazardous chunks.

  Only a second after the glass shattered, an alarm sounded. It was high pitch and loud, screeching into the silent afternoon.

  “Shit.”

  Adrian stood frozen on the veranda, surrounded by a sea of glass shards.

  Why is the alarm armed? There’s no one here.

  He thought about his options. He couldn’t turn around, run back across the waterlogged grass and go home. With no power and no water, he didn’t have a home left to go to. Ignoring the ear-piercing screech of the alarm, Adrian threw his pack through the broken window and then dived through, barely clearing the jagged remains still attached to the windowsill. He rolled to a stop inside the dark room. It smelt stale. His heart rate hammered. Sweat beaded under the thick waterproof jacket, still zipped right up and over his head. Doing his best to ignore the alarm’s incessant ringing, he felt for the wall through the darkness and used it as a guide.

  Adrian pushed open the door and entered the garage. He flicked on his large, black torch and the room lit up, fragments of weightless dust hovering in the tunnel of light. The dusty Mazda took up most of the cluttered concrete space.

  Moving as quickly as his manic movements allowed, Adrian inspected the roller door separating the garage from the outside world. He noticed the electric motor, then the power lead plugged into the wall.

  “Really!”

  The roller door was electric. With no power, the door would only open with brute force. He didn’t have time to mess around. If there were Union soldiers nearby, the alarm would draw their attention.

  Adrian opened the driver-side door and ducked inside. Someone much smaller than him had been driving. The seat covers were thick, fluffy grey wool. They reminded him of his grandmother’s car seats from when he was a child. They even had the same smell. Adrian used the mechanism underneath to slide the driver’s seat back and give his lanky legs some much-needed room. He pressed down on the ignition button once. The accessories dash lit up with an array of coloured signals. He pressed the ignition a second time and the car spluttered to life, the exhaust pipe spitting out a dark cloud of built up carbon monoxide.

  “It’s now or never!” he yelled inside the musty car.

  While the car idled in neutral, Adrian tested the accelerator, pressing down with his foot. The engine revved a high-pitched whine. He disengaged the handbrake, put the transmission into drive and pressed his foot down.

  Three, two, one…

  BANG.

  The small, blue Mazda penetrated the roller door, ripping it clean off its tracks. Adrian drove blindly, swerving out onto the wet road, his vision blocked as the corrugated roller-door clung to the front of the vehicle. As he turned the steering wheel, the whole roller door slid across the bonnet of the small Mazda and flipped onto the road beside him. It came to a grinding halt in the middle of the wet road. Adrian straightened up and took off down the street.

  Chapter 2

  Malik closed the hatch above the old fishing boat's engine and climbed up into the cramped cabin.

  “Everything’s set,” he said. Two other men sat around a small collapsible card table, smoking. “The oil level was low. I’ve added all that we had left. As long as the engine doesn’t burn it too quickly, we should be fine.”

  One man stared at Malik from across the small cabin. He towered close to seven feet in height. He looked awkward sitting inside the confined cabin. His skin was caramel brown, his ethnicity unclear. He inhaled on his cigarette and then exhaled, filling the tight space with a thick cloud of smoke, bluish in the afternoon light. “We should be fine? Or we will be fine?”

  His tone was firm.

  “We will be fine,” said Malik.

  “Good. I can’t afford drama. I’ve paid you to make sure we get where we want to… On time.”

  “It’s all good, Diego. We will get there… And on time. The boat is healthy. As long as our cargo gets here soon we can get out of here before sunset.”

  Diego inhaled another drag of his cigarette and stubbed the butt out into an overflowing ashtray in the centre of the table. Other than his name, smoking was a dead giveaway that Diego wasn’t from Soteria. Cigarettes had been banned for years. The guy sitting beside Diego said nothing. He nodded and finished his cigarette. He was small and wiry with pale skin, round, cautious eyes and a thick head of wild brown hair.

  Perry.

  He was the driver. It had been Perry’s boat before Diego bought it from him. Despite Diego’s clear intolerance of the small captain, there was no one that knew the waters west of Geraldton better. With the need to navigate through the infamous Abrolhos islands and the treacherous reefs that surrounded them, Diego kept Perry around.

  “Hey, Perry,” Diego said with authority. “Take Malik to the dock, make sure the coast is clear for our arrivals.”

  “Sure thing, D.”

  This was Malik’s second time smuggling citizens off the Australian mainland. Diego had been doing it for a year now. He had five successful trips under his belt and just as many offshore bank accounts filled with the life’s savings of desperate citizens. Malik had joined the team as a mechanic and boat builder three months earlier. They found him at a small port in Greece, on the run from authorities for smuggling prohibited items across the Mediterranean. Diego offered Malik a healthy fee to join him and Perry running the gauntlet through the waters of Soteria.

  With what the citizens seemed willing to pay, how could Malik say no?

  The collapse of the Internet would make payment infinitely harder. Rumours circulated about the removal of hard currency with the Soteria regime. The Union planned on introducing a credit
system instead. Malik wondered how future escapees could pay Diego for their services with the new credit system. The truth was, they wouldn’t.

  Although this was only Malik’s second journey, it might also be his last.

  Putting on a full-body weatherproof suit, Malik climbed the rusty rungs of the ladder and stepped out into the fierce weather. Perry stood on the bow already, covered head to toe in a white, synthetic biohazard suit. They ran across the empty pier and reached the small entrance to the harbour. The steel canopy covering the front gate offered brief protection from the harsh elements.

  It was 5:39. The cargo should arrive soon.

  Malik unlocked a padlock attached to a thick steel chain. They had wrapped the chain around the metal gate several times, like a defensive python constricting the steel frame. While he untied the chain, Perry pulled a small sign from the pocket of his protective suit and hung it from a single bent nail protruding from the front gate.

  Pier B. Row 4.

  Underneath the text was the image of a crocodile. Those that needed to know would know. The cunning crocodile was Diego’s logo.

  Diego and his team expected six people to arrive: a family of four, husband, wife and two kids, and two others. The fee the family paid alone covered the usual costs of such a mission, so the other two were just profit in the pocket. Malik felt strange pangs of guilt, knowing they were making money off the sheer desperation of others. He then reminded himself of the war-torn world that surrounded them.

  It was dog eat dog.

  All nine passengers would need to cram inside the small cabin for the journey. The boat hadn’t been built for nine people. It had been built for four at most. Cramped would have to do, though. The cargo wasn’t paying for luxury. They paid for freedom. This was the only way to get in and out unnoticed. The boat was small, inconspicuous. The Union would never expect a fishing boat that had docked at Hilary Harbour for two decades was cramming escapees inside like sardines in a can and fleeing west.