Six Bullets by Jeremy Bates Read Free Book Online Page A

Adelaide.”
    “Don’t be stupid, Sully. There’s nothing but death there.”
    “There’s nothing but death here!”
    “At least you’re alive here.”
    “You call this living?”
    “You can’t leave me, Sully. You can’t leave Walter.”
    He was silent. I think he was fighting back tears.
    “Sully,” I said, “come inside. Let’s talk.”
    He opened the driver’s side door, tossed the piece of paper
and pen inside.
    “Sully!” I picked up the Remington, “I know what you’re
thinking. You’re thinking about finding Amy.”
    He only looked at me.
    “She’s dead, Sully,” I said. “I’m sorry, but that’s the sad
truth.”
    “You don’t know that!”
    “Come inside, boy.”
    “I can’t stay here, Dad.”
    “You can’t leave.” I pressed the rifle’s buttstock into my
shoulder, took aim at him. “I can’t let you, Sully.”
    “You going to shoot me?”
    “Come inside!”
    He climbed behind the wheel of the pickup.
    “Sully,” I said, “don’t make me do this!”
    “Say goodbye to Walt for me, will you?”
    I took up the slack in the trigger.
    “Sully!”
    He closed the door, started the engine, then drove away. I
followed his progress through the rifle’s scope until I could no longer see him.
     
    ••••••
     
    He didn’t take any of our supplies,
Walt. Didn’t take my guns either, not even Buzz’s .22 Winchester. He could
have. I was out cold, and he could have taken everything.
    He has the supplies that were in the back of the pickup, the
ones the bikies seized from the bloke holed up at the hospital. He also has all
ten or however many of the bikies’ shotguns, and I suspect whatever stockpile
of ammunition they had.
    So he has the means to survive for a while. But he’s just a
kid.
    He’s just a fucking sixteen-year-old kid.
     
    ••••••
     
    It’s been almost one year since my
last entry. The sky’s cleared so we can see the sun again. Plants and weeds are
poking through the ground here and there. Even so, Broken Hill remains a ghost
town save the odd bike gang that passes through, or the lone survivor, usually
male and middle-aged, though I once saw a ute driven by a fair-haired female, a
baby in the seat beside her. Oh, you spoke your first word the other week,
Walt, you said, “Dadda.” And you want to know some amazing news? Sullivan is
back! I couldn’t believe it myself, and I admit, tears came to my eyes when I
saw the HiLux approaching and my boy behind the wheel.
    He’s changed. He might only be seventeen now, but he’s
become a man—aged through trial by fire, I guess you’d say. His hair’s shorter
and he has a beard. But the change is more than just his physical appearance.
There’s a hardness to him. You can see it in his walk, how he holds himself, in
his eyes, how he doesn’t miss anything.
    He played with you, Walt. You laughed like a maniac. He told
me about Adelaide, and the situation there is as grave as I’ve always feared.
Most of the buildings are mausoleums, filled with the victims of hunger or
thirst, or this new super-plague being spread by insects feasting on the dead.
The military patrols the streets in tanks and other armored vehicles to enforce
martial law. They have portable crematoriums to dispose of the bodies they come
across. Gunshots are as common as honking horns used to be. Rival gangs rule
neighborhoods so dangerous not even well-armed troops venture into them.
    I don’t know how Sully survived so long. He didn’t tell me,
and I didn’t ask.
     
    ••••••
     
    Rule number three: Never, ever let
anyone leave alive.
    I’m so fucking stupid.
     
    ••••••
     
    Sully struck me with something when
I was sleeping. I don’t know what he used. But when I came around my head
screamed with white pain, and I was covered with dried blood.
    The fallout shelter is nearly empty. It makes me sick to my
stomach to write these words, but it’s the sad truth. Sully left us enough food
for