Max Arena (29 page)

Max ignored the
comment and kept moving forwards, his pace increasing with every
step. Peter pushed uncertainly to his feet. The figure of a man
appeared on the landing at the top of the staircase, a soldier’s
rifle in his grasp. Max was now virtually sprinting. Peter
remembered his gun, but then realised he was no longer holding it.
The intruder with the gun froze as he took in the vision of Max
charging at him. Max was at full pelt now and without slowing down,
he ripped off a chunk of splintered wood from the wall and a split
second later, launched himself out over the ragged hole in the
floor.

The intruder’s
eyes grew wide as Max filled his sight. In mid flight, Max pegged
the lump of wood at the man, hitting him squarely between the eyes.
Continuing his flight, Max forward somersaulted and cleared the
hole in the floor to land on his feet on the far side on the main
landing.

Gunfire tore
through the air, forcing Max to dive onto his stomach and lie flat.
Bullets strafed the edge of the landing next to him, sending wooden
shards spinning past his face. In the fraction of a second view Max
had gained of the foyer, he had located the second man to be near
the main doors leading out to the portico. All Max had to do was
get off this landing, cross the ten metres to the doors and take
the man out. More gunfire ripped up the landing in front of him.
Max squinted. He knew what he had to do, but how?

Glancing
around, Max made a decision. The unconscious man next to him had
dropped his rifle. Rolling onto his back, Max grabbed the gun and
tossed it back through the hole in the floor the grenade had
blasted. Hoping for it to cause a diversion, Max jumped up as fast
as he could and bounded up onto the landing railing to launch
himself out into thin air, four metres off the unforgiving marble
floor below.

Fortunately,
the falling rifle had diverted the gunman’s attention and he did
not react immediately to Max’s ploy. The gunman watched the rifle
tumble harmlessly to the ground, just as Max went airborne. Two
seconds later, the rifle clattered to the marble floor and the
gunman started to return his aim back to Max, who was now
somersaulting towards the ground.

Max’s feet
planted firmly onto the marble just as the gunman was brining the
muzzle of his rifle round to fix onto Max’s torso. Max used his
momentum to instantly bound forwards and close the gap, his right
fist raised to deliver a killing blow. The gunman arced his barrel
up and pulled the trigger. Max’s eyes zeroed in on the target,
every ounce of his being set to pummel the life out of this
man.

The sound of
the single shot filled the foyer, but Max did not hear it as he
focused on landing his blow. In that split second, Max saw the
gunman recoil backwards, forcing his fist to go wide of the mark.
Landing on his feet, Max watched his foe crumple backwards out the
main doors to land in a heap on the steps of the front entry. With
his fist still half raised, Max looked down on his now dead enemy.
He then turned and looked back up at the landing.

There was
Peter, perched on the edge of the hole in the landing floor, his
gun still in both hands, arms outstretched and barrel pointing down
at where the intruder had been. Looking directly at him, Max could
tell Peter’s dazed wits had been replaced by honed steel, his
single shot having taken the man out.

Max nodded once
and Peter reciprocated. No words were spoken.

One minute
later, both men were outside and running across the eastern lawn
towards the Black Hawks. All of the choppers squatted lightly on
the broad, green turf with their rotors whining overhead, ready for
lift off. Soldiers kneeled at regular spacings around all of the
aircraft, guarding the perimeter. None of them turned to look at
Peter and Max as they sprinted past, plasterboard dust smeared over
their clothes and faces.

Through the
open door of the nearest Black Hawk, Max could see his family, Kris
and Peter’s team, all strapped in to their seats. As they ran up,
Peter’s team hauled them aboard.

‘Go!’ Peter
yelled.

The pilot
acknowledged the command by lifting the chopper’s wheels off the
ground. Peter quickly helped strap Max in next to Elsa as they rose
upwards. Then after strapping himself in, he looked out the side
door just as the aircraft powered forwards to bank over the
mansion.

From the air,
Peter gained a much wider view of the state of play all around the
estate. Intruders were running rampant, climbing over the boundary
fence at multiple places. Meanwhile, the military detail were
reforming near the main gate and beginning to move in an orderly
fashion back towards the remaining Black Hawks, cutting down
intruders as they went. Peter suspected they were no longer using
rubber bullets. The situation demanded lethal action. They were now
shooting the very citizens they were meant to protect.

Peter turned
to look across at Elsa who had covered Millie’s and Jason’s eyes,
while Max had wrapped an arm around her shoulders, still protecting
his family. The man was unstoppable. Sure, Peter had just saved
Max’s life, but Max’s athleticism was unbelievable. The way he had
fearlessly launched himself off that landing and then in the blink
of an eye, got on top of that guy and almost killed him? That had
been nothing short of superhuman.

Fortunately,
Peter’s own aim had held true, otherwise right now Max might be
dead and all of them doomed. Then, as if Max had been reading
Peter’s mind, he looked around and nodded to him.

Peter nodded
back and after a few brief moments of holding each others’ gaze,
Peter looked back out the open door to watch the bush pass
underneath them in a speed blur.

5pm, 2
^nd
August (later that same day).
Dread

Max walked
into the living room to find Elsa awake and seated on the couch in
the growing gloom of the late winter’s afternoon. Both Millie and
Jason lay asleep on either side of her, their heads nestled in her
lap. While peace adorned the children’s faces, weariness dragged at
Elsa’s features. Fighting fatigue to keep her bloodshot eyes open,
she had no intention of letting her guard slip following their
escape.

Elsa had not
noticed Max standing there, so he stayed in the doorway and watched
his family, letting his mind’s eye play back the afternoon’s flight
from the estate to their arrival here in their new refuge.

It had taken
two hours to fly to their new base, the journey completed entirely
in silence, everyone’s’ thoughts all consuming. Elsa and Max had
cuddled the kids the whole way, sharing a few brief glances at each
other, but nothing more. Kris however, had remained frozen in her
seat from the moment they lifted off. During the trip, Elsa had
tried several times to stir her, but failed, Kris’ gaze stuck
unseeing out the side door.

After flying
over Brisbane and reaching the coast, the Black Hawk had turned
north and hugged the seaboard. Steadily, the pilot veered the Black
Hawk out to sea until all they could see beneath them was the
endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean, embroidered with a generous
smattering of mid afternoon whitecaps.

Then, an
island appeared and the helicopter banked to circumnavigate it,
revealing the land mass to be essentially a low relief, oval-shaped
dome with fringing palm trees and open, grassed slopes rising on
all sides. On the very crest of the hill a sizeable mansion lay
with broad, open lawns surrounding it.

A few minutes
later the pilot had put the Black Hawk down on the southern lawn
and they all disembarked, a golf cart waiting to transport them up
to the house. Kris had needed to be forcibly carried out of the
aircraft and seated in the cart, her silence escalating to
effective paralysis. Clearly in the advanced stages of shock, Peter
had immediately called the medical staff to get an emergency room
ready for Kris inside the house.

To call the
residence a house was a gross understatement. It was another
mansion, very different in design from the previous one, but
probably even more palatial. The building was three storeys in
places with contemporary architecture comprising a blend of
rendered masonry, glass, steel and exposed timber. Seated atop the
hill, it commanded the island like a fortress in the ocean.

Inside, the
mansion’s massive size was well accompanied by huge rooms and
expansive views over the ocean worthy of any billionaire’s dollar.
Again, how Joseph had laid his hands on this place was not a
question anyone wanted to ask and to be fair right now, was not
really food for thought anyway considering their plight to get to
it.

Since landing,
the whole group had introverted. Kris had been immediately whisked
away into one of the bedroom suites upstairs with a team of
paramedics, while Elsa had brought the kids into this living room,
seeking quiet and solace for her and the kids to rest. Peter had
also disappeared indicating he had to finalise the security details
for their stay.

That had left
Max all alone and with nothing else to do, he had walked the
grounds. He had very much wanted to talk to Joseph and Abdullah,
but that would have to wait, until tonight. He did briefly run into
one of Peter’s team though, who gave him a run down on the estate
and its security, indicating their new location was much safer than
the last. Foot, air and sea patrols protected the island. No one
was getting in here unless they wanted to start a war, so with the
sun starting its descent into the dim, winter horizon, Max had made
his way upstairs to find Elsa and the children.

In the
upstairs living room, Elsa stirred and her eyes blearily found Max
across the room. Max moved to turn on the light, but Elsa’s voice
stopped him.

‘Don’t,’ she
said. ‘You’ll wake the kids.’

Max nodded and
withdrew his hand. Gently, Elsa extracted both children from her
lap and left them in peace on the couch. She then led Max out of
the room and into an adjacent sitting room, where she did turn on
the light. A sumptuous square of couches surrounded a huge, carved
coffee table resting on a plush, pile rug. Elsa lowered herself
onto one of the couches and rubbed her face. She then looked up at
Max who looked no different to how he normally did, calm, but
alert.

‘I know you’re
half alien,’ Elsa started, ‘but doesn’t the human half ever get
tired?’

Max curled a
corner of his mouth and sidled in next to her.

‘I may not be
tired as you, but what I am tired of is running and hiding,’ Max
replied, holding his wife’s hand.

‘Five months,
darling. That’s when the running and hiding stops.’

Max nodded. In
five months time maybe everything stopped, forever. Elsa
continued.

‘So, did you
find out where we are?’ she asked, looking around the room. ‘Joe
sure can pull some strings. This place is a palace.’

‘One of Sir
Reginald Flottmore’s holiday pads apparently?’ Max replied.

‘
The
Sir Reginald Flottmore? The richest man in the world?’

‘Yeah. His
portraits are all over the walls downstairs. It’s like a shrine.
The bloke from Peter’s team says both Joe
and
Abdullah are
mates with Flottmore. Pretty powerful trio.’

‘Too right.
Got to admit, I do like this place more than the last one though.
Not really a ranch kind of girl. Much prefer the beach.’

‘Pity we
didn’t have time to pack the bikini,’ Max replied, nudging his
wife.

‘Didn’t have
time to pack
anything
,’ she replied, pulling a face. ‘I hope
there’s a shopping trip in the plan?’

‘I hope there
are still shops out there that are open?’ Max added.

Elsa nodded
silently, her eyes dipping down. Max continued.

‘Peter’s man
was also saying that the plan was to move us here sooner or later
anyway. It’s easier to protect us and it has better facilities. The
attack just upped the schedule a bit.’

Elsa rubbed
her face again with her spare hand. Max squeezed her other
hand.

‘That was
pretty scary back there,’ she said. ‘I know they were just ordinary
people made desperate by fear and they were really just hungry, but
that was..’ she trailed off shaking her head.

‘You’re right.
They were just hungry,’ Max replied.

‘But hungry
enough to want to shoot us and do God knows what else?’ Elsa shot
back.

‘I guess all
this proves that civilisation can be pretty fragile when it gets
threatened,’ Max answered. ‘We don’t know what it’s really like out
there. We see things on TV and Peter gives us his security
briefings, but that’s only information. Actually living out there
must be completely different and much harder than we can imagine?
We know people are dying, really dying and today we saw how that
happens, right up close.’ Max paused as the daylight outside
slipped completely away into twilight. ‘Maybe we needed to see
that? Maybe we needed a wakeup call to get us ready for what’s
coming next?’

Elsa glanced
up at her husband and then snuggled a little more closely into
him.

‘Maybe?’ she
said. ‘But that was a little too close for me. I just hope the kids
don’t get affected by whatever they saw?’ Max nodded. Elsa added,
‘I hope all the staff and the soldiers got out too and that no one
else was hurt, apart from the two guys you and Peter took out?’

‘Peter’s man
also said all the staff got out, but two soldiers were killed and
lots of civilians. The rubber bullets got swapped out while we were
leaving.’

Elsa winced,
but stayed quiet. Max took in a deep breath and squeezed his wife’s
hand again before standing up to turn and face her.

‘Good news
is,’ he started, ‘Millie and Jason’s teacher is already here and
he’ll be ready to start teaching again tomorrow, so the kids at
least might be able to get back into their normal routine
quickly?’