The Hunger Rebellion Read online

  The Hunger Rebellion

  A Dystopian Tale

  G. F. Cusack

  The Hunger Rebellion

  A Dystopian Tale

  By

  G. F. Cusack

  Copyright Ged Cusack 2019

  First published in the US 2019

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction, names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Sarah Oliver

  www.saraoliverdesign.com

  Contents

  1. Escape from the rebel refuge

  2. Will’s view of the raid

  3. Discussion in the woods

  4. Will travels back to the Sanctuary

  5. Pepper and Flo reach the cabin

  6. Will reports his successes

  7. Pepper and Flo north of the cabin

  8. Introducing Zap in the Sanctuary

  9. Through another’s eyes

  10. The warriors arrive at the pits

  11. The attack on Pepper and Flo

  12. The attack through Zap’s eyes

  13. Smit’s last chance

  14. In the woods the day after the attack

  15. Brand arrives at the pits

  16. Weathering the downpour

  17. The aging ceremony

  18. Kath’s request to Pepper

  19. The night patrol

  20. Kath and Florence discuss her adventures

  21. The resistance council meeting

  22. Pepper and Kath plan his journey to the rebels

  23. Zap receives an invitation from Karla

  24. Food riots

  25. Pepper and Flo warn Frank

  26. The bar meeting

  27. Zap meets Karla

  28. Will’s view of the attack on the rebel stronghold

  29. Frank’s view of the attack on the rebel stronghold

  30. The second resistance council meeting

  31. Debs meets with the scouts near the Farm

  32. Will briefs Brand on the first plane attack

  33. Flashback to Pepper’s basic training

  34. Will views the attack on the Farm

  35. Debs and Pepper arrive at the Farm

  36. Debs briefs the rebels for the journey north

  37. Will briefs Brand on the assault on the Farm

  38. Debs’ convoys head for the border

  39. The summoning of Smit

  40. Heading into the wastelands

  41. The attack on the border post

  42. Preparations for the festival

  43. Zap is summoned to Brand’s office

  44. Deciding to head to the Sanctuary

  45. River discovers that the border post is lost

  46. The rebels rendezvous with Hook

  47. Brand takes stock

  48. Zap and Flo meet

  49. Prepping for the warriors’ escape

  50. Attack on the elite compound

  51. Attack on the gel plants

  52. Storming the council buildings

  Epilogue

  Sanctuary Series Book Two Preview

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Escape from the rebel refuge

  10 August 2202

  Pepper was in the bathroom when he heard the first rattles of gunfire. Pausing from drying his hands, his first thoughts were that there was an internal skirmish underway. The rebels in this refuge weren’t an organisation, more of a collection of smaller individual gangs. The Company was the real enemy but the rebel groups weren’t a peaceful alliance. It wasn’t unheard of for petty squabbles to escalate into violence.

  Although the rebels had a selection of guns, Pepper knew immediately that he was listening to sustained gunfire. The volumes of the bullets could only mean one thing: they were under attack from the forces of the Company.

  Standing over two metres tall with a muscly frame and battle scars over most of his dark skin, he projected an imposing figure. Ripping the door open, he was outside of the bathroom in no time. The sound of the bullets was getting closer and a quick assessment of the situation told him that although his whole life he had stood up to bullies, today was not the day to fight and survive.

  The Company was not here to take prisoners and its heavy firepower was rapidly cutting down the few resistance fighters left alive. Directly in front of him stood a young woman with long dark hair. She was rigid against the wall and Pepper was overcome with an urge to help her. Without a second thought, he grabbed her and swept her along with him as he ran down the narrow corridor, past the bathroom towards an escape tunnel.

  Noticing that her hands were tied, he quickly drew a knife from his pocket and cut the ropes.

  As he exposed the hidden hatch, he paused for only a second to address her. “What’s your name?”

  “Flo,” she murmured weakly.

  “Okay Flo, if you want to live, you are going to go through this tunnel as quickly and quietly as possible. Don’t stop once you are in there as I’ll be right behind you and I don’t want to hurt you with my big heavy boots!”

  It was a tight squeeze for someone of his build but the incentive to stay alive was enough to make him compress his broad shoulders to fit. He sneaked a quick look over his shoulder to see if anyone else was going to escape but the only people in view were Company men and he just managed to secure the hatch before they reached it.

  Pepper emerged from the shaft into the dark, cloudy night. Flo was there, standing stiff against the wall, just as she had been inside. Luckily, because the cloud was covering the moon, the two sentries hadn’t noticed her.

  Her initial lack of movement had been an advantage but time was against them – he needed to get her to move quickly. The two sentries with their grey coveralls and assault rifles meandered along a lax route. Pepper mused that if they’d worked for him, he’d have stern words with them after the assault. As it was, their limited movements did allow Pepper to easily track them.

  After the troops turned away, without waiting for a response from Flo he hastily shepherded her into the woods. Once they were safe within the dark cover of the forest canopy, Pepper placed his hand over Flo’s mouth and shook her to get some response. It was not safe to remain where they were and, if they were to have a conversation, it needed to be further away from the ears of the Company forces.

  Pepper said quietly to Flo, “Come with me and say nothing, our lives depend on this.” Taking her by the hand, he guided her further into the woods and she reluctantly followed. Only after they had walked silently through the woods for around twenty minutes did Pepper believe that they were far enough away to attempt a conversation.

  2

  Will’s view of the raid

  10 August 2202

  The Company’s assault team had been waiting outside the warehouse for over an hour in the dark. With no moonlight, it was difficult for Will to make out the outline of the main doors.

  Will had been dispatched from the Sanctuary to disrupt any pockets of rebels in this area. Other members of the Company council perceived Will as just a ruthless thug but supreme leader Brand valued his particular set of skills.

  Brand’s patronage had marked Will as his right-hand man. No one had the authority or inclination to mess with the supreme leader’s man, allowing him to amass power and privilege well above his station.
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  The resistance member that he had bribed was to give the signal when at least fifty percent of the rebels were present in the building. In the past, Will had used threats against families as a way of leveraging his victims. But now that the value of human life was so low, he found offering food was a much more successful incentive.

  The rebel went to the vehicle and turned the lights on and off three times in succession – the signal.

  Will pressed the button on his radio. “Go, go, go,” he shouted. An explosion lit up the night as the charges on the main doors exploded.

  Even though they were taken by surprise and were outmatched by the superior firepower, the rebels put up a valiant fight. The flashes of automatics fire lit up the dark of the night.

  Following in behind his advance troops, Will was surprised to find that some fighting continued. The rebel leader had barricaded himself in the reinforced part of the building and was resisting till the end.

  “Hello in there,” Will shouted during a lull in the gunfire.

  The smell of smoke remained in the air and a ring from the previous shots echoed but no reply was forthcoming.

  He tried again. “If you come out now, I promise you’ll not be harmed. We have done what we came here to do. This place is done but you have no reason to sacrifice yourself for a few broken buildings.”

  “I’ve never met a Company man I could trust,” came a voice from the other side of the barricade.

  “Who am I talking to?” Will asked. He wasn’t really interested but if he could build a dialogue, he could resolve this matter faster. It was getting late and he was sick of dealing with these low lives.

  “My name is Paris. Make sure that you spell it right when you write in your report how many of your troops I have killed,” he replied defiantly.

  “If you are not concerned for yourself, think of your people. We have captured ten of your fighters alive and if you want them to stay that way, I suggest you come out.”

  Paris was unsure of his next move. There was every chance that the Company man was lying. “Give me their names, if you have them.”

  Will kicked one of the wounded rebels. “What’s your name?”

  “Graeme,” came the faint reply.

  “And you three?” he said to the others.

  “Donna.” “Gil.” “Pat.”

  “Okay, I’ve got a Graeme, a Gil, a Pat and even a Donna. The other six are too injured to speak. If you don’t want all of their blood on your hands, you need to come out in the next five minutes.” After a pause, Will finished, “Some of these are women – can you live with their deaths?”

  Paris relented. However slim a chance, he had to try to save his people. He had seven fighters left fighting with him and he gave them the signal to remove the barricades.

  As the rebels came out with their hands in the air, Will waited. When they were all in view, he asked, “Which one of you is Paris?”

  A Latin-looking man stepped forward and raised a hand. Before he could say a word, Will raised his rifle and shot him in the head. “Take the rest of these outside and dispose of them,” he ordered his troops.

  With no exact figures on the number of rebels he had started fighting, Will was unsure of how many might have slipped through his net. The final body count was at least fifty-three dead rebels, plus two dead and ten seriously injured among his own troops. He would report the action as a success to Brand and hope that the supreme leader thought so too.

  Still, even though they had removed another rebel cell from the landscape, the girl’s escape made Will doubt that Brand would class this mission as a success.

  Slaughtering the remnants of the cell after they had surrendered removed the chance that these scum would cause the Company any further trouble. Will thought it ironic that the bodies of the people fighting against the liquidation process would all contribute to a batch of gel packs.

  3

  Discussion in the woods

  10 August 2202

  Pepper was unsure why he had experienced an overwhelming feeling to help this young woman, both when he first encountered her inside the building and when he had emerged from the tunnel to find her again standing rigid. Initially he’d put it down to sympathy – the fact that he towered over her by over a foot and outweighed her by five stone made him think that she was scared of him. Now he was unsure if any of that was true.

  Even though he thought that they were safe from listening ears now, he spoke quietly. “Who are you really? Is Flo even your full name?”

  Receiving no response, he asked again, “Who are you?”

  After his fourth attempt at the question, Flo murmured under her breath, “Flo, Flo”.

  Although he felt some unexplained empathy with her, with his limited time he thought they weren’t making enough progress. His instincts made him believe that she wasn’t a threat but he hadn’t survived this long on the run from the Company without having some kind of strategy.

  “Okay so your name is Flo. Is that short for something? “

  She was becoming a little more animated, as though she was coming out of a trance. Her voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “My name is just Flo.”

  “I need to know what you were doing in that place. I need to know what a young woman like you was doing with the rebels. What were you doing there?”

  “I was a prisoner.”

  “A prisoner of who? Why were you a prisoner?”

  “The Murdochs had brought me to the refuge to trade me with another group, I don’t know its name.”

  Pepper was aware that many groups made up the resistance. They were a disorganised, ragtag bunch of a coalition and not all of them savoury.

  He was unsure what value this young woman could have to them but she was clearly suffering from shock. Rather than digging into the reasons for trading, he focused on his immediate goal: to decide whether to trust her.

  “Where are you originally from?” he asked.

  “My home is Pandora,” she murmured.

  “What or where is Pandora?” Pepper asked quizzically.

  “It’s a farm, far to the north.”

  Because the woman was young and her answers were laboured, Pepper decided to wrap things up quickly. “How do you know the farm’s in the far north?” he asked.

  “I spent most of my life on a farm in the countryside. I understand the movement of the sun and the location of the stars enough to know that I have been travelling south for a long time. Will you take me home?”

  Pepper was taken aback. Without thinking, he blurted out, “I’ve saved you from whatever was going to happen to you, but I don’t need a travelling companion.”

  He was torn between a feeling of responsibility now that he had saved her and an unwillingness to retain that responsibility for too long. Pepper’s main criterion for survival was his “what’s in it for me?” attitude. Some people might see that as selfish but, as a large African-American male, he stood out from the crowd and this was the only way he knew to stay alive as a long-term deserter from the Company forces.

  Pepper thought fast. “Here’s what I can do. I have a friend who lives not far away. Rogan has a cabin and it is safe there. I’m willing to take you there and you can stay with him for a while.”

  He needed to replenish his supplies anyway, having lost his backpack full of resources in the refuge. The last time he’d seen it, it was in the hands of the rebel leader Paris. He could have beaten himself up for leaving the pack behind when he went to relieve himself, but it wouldn’t have been so useful right now, as it mainly contained the medicines he had brought to trade.

  Figuring that self-deprecation was not going to help him, he decided to go back to the cabin and collect some supplies he had stashed there. Rogan was a bit more hospitable and older than Pepper, and Pepper believed that Rogan might find a use for the girl – cleaning, cooking, who knew? Perhaps, coming from a farm, she could prepare food or even grow some kind of plants.

  “Is that okay?”
he asked her. “I can take you to a cabin where a man I know lives. He’s a nice guy and then we can discuss what you want to do. I think for the time being we need to get as far away from the place that was just attacked as possible.”

  Flo nodded.

  “This is only going to work if you do what I say, when I say. Do you understand that?”

  Flo again nodded feebly.

  “I mean it! I haven’t survived this long without trusting my instincts. If you are not going to do as I say, tell me now and I will leave you here.”

  Flo murmured under her breath, “I will do what you say.”

  Although she seemed in a fragile state, Pepper reiterated, “Then it is agreed: I will take you to the cabin and you will do exactly as I say, when I say it?”

  With that, he headed north and she followed him closely behind.

  4