Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation]

by Tayell, Frank

  “Those children are being flown to a small island with virtually no one there,” Bianca said. “Someone must take care of them, and there are two military pilots aboard the plane. As Doctor Dodson isn’t flying, I’m worried it will be him. But I can go instead.”

  “You’re volunteering to look after five thousand kids?” Tess asked.

  “Dr Dodson has to return to Perth to keep the airlift running,” Bianca said. “I’m not good with children, but I should have learned how sixteen years ago.”

  “Strewth, Bee, this isn’t the time to hunt for repentance.”

  “Isn’t it?” Bianca said. “If not now, when? I’m not a soldier. I’m not a doctor, or pilot, or sailor. I can help the children. Please, let me be useful.”

  Tess unslung her carbine, and held it out. “Take this. I wish I could give you more.”

  “We are not abandoning Africa!” the general roared, his words echoing across the runway.

  “Who’d be a diplomat?” Tess muttered. “I’ll see you in Perth, Bee. Good luck, and thank you. Get aboard, and tell the pilots to get ready to take off.” She turned back to the argument.

  “General,” Tess said. “You don’t want to abandon Africa. Nor do I.”

  “We will not leave,” the general said.

  “Good,” Tess said. “Inhambane is lost. Because of those ships which went to Madagascar, because of the refugees who headed to the coast in hope of escaping by sea, there are too many zombies. In Canada, a general was using construction machines as tanks to lead a relief column into the United States. We’ve got two diesel-transport ships in the harbour, and a load of mining machines on the bridges to the south. Take the fuel, take those machines, and drive away from here.”

  “And go where?” the general asked.

  “It’s your continent, mate, you tell me,” Tess said. “But it needs to be somewhere on the coast where a relief-fleet can pick up refugees. Somewhere far enough away from Madagascar we don’t have to worry about ships filled with the dead. Somewhere which had a runway, and is within flying range of the island of Rodrigues.”

  “South Africa,” the general said.

  “Cape Town,” the ambassador said. “It has to be Cape Town. We can drive there, but it is within range of a plane.”

  “Cape Town’s a major hub, which would have made it a major target for a nuclear bomb,” Tusitala said.

  “No one knows if it was,” the general said.

  “The refugees might,” Tusitala said. “We should canvass them.”

  “We’ve no time,” Tess said. “We’ve got to pick a destination so I can tell Mick, and he can tell Perth, and they can tell the captains of the rescue ships.”

  “Cape Hangklip,” the ambassador said. “On the east of False Bay. It is close to Cape Town, but still a safe distance from the city. We will find a refuge, but we will send scouts ahead of us to Cape Hangklip. Find them there, and they will tell you where to find the rest of us.”

  “Sounds good,” Tess said. “General?”

  He gave a slow nod. “Agreed.”

  “I’ll speak to Captain Adams,” Tusitala said.

  “And I better tell Mick,” Tess said.

  “This plan breaks all my rules,” Mick said. He and Tess stood on the tarmac as the last of the children got aboard.

  “There’s no alternative,” Tess said. “We can’t stay here. People are already leaving. But if we try to stay, you’d have to fly these planes in full of supplies, and we both know what a mess Australia’s logistics are in. One plane crashes, takes out the runway, and it’s over. Too many zoms come from the south, and there’s no escape. But there is an escape now.”

  “Through two thousand kilometres of a potentially radioactive continent, to a potentially radioactive ruin of a city neither of us have heard a peep about since the sky fell on our heads,” Mick said. “Sounds like that ambassador isn’t any better informed. Are you going with them?”

  “By ship or by road,” Tess said. “But I can’t leave by plane, and you can’t be on the next one. You’ve got to go back to Perth and make sure the rescue ships are coming.”

  17th March

  Chapter 12 - The Worst Workout

  HMNZS Te Taiki, Mozambique

  A weight dropped from her shoulders as fast as the helicopter soared upwards, taking her to the HMNZS Te Taiki.

  The previous day, after Mick’s plane had departed, Tess had driven back to the beach. The injured had been loaded into the bus, while the surviving defenders had been marshalled into a column and walked back to town. Clyde had set a gruelling pace. Frustratingly, Toppley had no difficulty keeping up, while Tess’s hip had made itself known at the three-kilometre mark.

  They’d sung bush songs to maintain their spirits, alternating between African and Australian, all of which Clyde knew. Dr Avalon attempted a quiz on the electrical conductivity of alloys, but Leo was the only one who might have understood the questions, and he was suffering the heat in silence. Oakes dealt with the undead, for a total of nineteen lost souls. Worryingly, all came from the south. All were recently turned. But their column walked into Inhambane alive. Exhausted, but alive.

  As the sun hovered directly overhead, seemingly for hours, Tess had longed for sleep, but instead had walked the rooftops, being seen, offering what words of reassurance she could that departure was imminent. The fuel-freighters were brought inshore, their contents unloaded into the harbour-side tanks. The general went south to retrieve the mining machines, and came back with, among other vehicles, the four bulldozers which had been barricading the bridge.

  After the dozers arrived, it was far too late to put them back. While their presence guaranteed the peninsula would fall sooner, it confirmed the general’s intent to drive south.

  All that time, and after, planes arrived. Soldiers disembarked. Children boarded. The sun burned. The sun set, and Tess sent the scientists and Zach to the warship. Night’s arrival brought the return of fear and the release of grief. Tess, once more, paced the rooftops, offering what comfort and reassurance she could. The night was punctuated by rifle fire, and warning shouts. Whenever she reached that part of the city, she always found Clyde, Hawker, or Oakes already there, and the danger long dealt with.

  When dawn arrived, over fifty hours since she’d properly slept, so did orders for her to report aboard the frigate.

  As the helicopter set down, a deckhand threw open the door. Head bowed, Tess trudged from the helicopter, following the sailor to a bulkhead door. Inside, suddenly, she was enveloped in cool silence. The ship thrummed with engine vibrations, and it was barely cooler inside than out, but she was out of the sun, and away from the flies, a growing menace on the mainland. Laying her hand against the cool metal wall, she made the mistake of closing her eyes.

  “Ma’am?” the sailor said. “Do you need to visit the doc?”

  Tess forced her eyes open. “Sorry. It’s been a busy month.”

  The sailor led her through cramped corridors and crowded landings, until they reached a nearly empty room near the stern: a gym. Well-equipped but as cramped as the corridors. It was reminiscent of the just-out-of-town hotels where equipment was purchased so it could be listed as a feature, with no consideration for how it would all fit into one room. Treadmills, recumbent bikes, weights, and a pair of rowing machines, though the last seemed distasteful aboard a ship. Between and atop the equipment, however, were crates. Plastic. Not military. Secured with rope and webbing to the room’s walls and the bolted-down equipment.

  One person was in the room, standing hands on hips, clearly having been sorting through the boxes.

  “Captain Adams, this is Commissioner Qwong,”

  “Thank you, Sullivan. Those three crates by the door are bandages. Send them ashore to travel with the convoy.”

  “Aye-aye, ma’am.” The sailor grabbed a crate and hurried away.

  “Captain Robyn Adams, g’day,” the captain said, holding out a hand. She wore sweats and a short-sleeved t-shirt,
though with combat-boots on her feet. About fifty years old, her clipped hair was salted at the temples, and peppered on the crown. Around one-point-eight metres tall, thin waisted, broad shouldered, well toned, and with a cobweb of shrapnel scar tissue running up her right arm.

  “Tess Qwong. Kia ora. Didn’t know warships had gyms.”

  “Gotta stay fit,” Adams said. “I’m supposed to get ten minutes a day for rehab, but chucking crates is not the same as three rounds in the ring.”

  “You’re a boxer?” Tess asked.

  “I was. I started an inter-ship tournament when I took command. Do you know what happened the same day we had our first bout? Manhattan. I’m not as superstitious as some sailors, but my gloves will stay in my locker until we’re back in home-port.”

  “Me, I’m a reluctant runner,” Tess said. She tapped her hip. “Stab-wound, a few years back. I’m supposed to clock up a gentle five-k every other day. Now, it’s too often a gruelling hike. What is all this gear?”

  “Salvage from the ships which were here before us,” Adams said. “As are thirty members of our crew. I’ve swapped some of mine onto the diesel freighters. Lost a few to suicide. Only one to action.” She lifted the lid of the box. “Rope. More rope. Useful, but weight is fuel. Weight is speed. Weight is time.” She put the lid back on the box and crossed to a triple-stack of crates piled on the treadmill. On the lid of the topmost box were a tablet, a flask, and two glasses. “We’re three months out of a major refit, on a shakedown, and two weeks overdue for our return to home-port. Our orders were to protect the refugees. They have not been countermanded. Did you hear about the civil war?”

  “No? Where?” Tess asked.

  “At sea. Some are calling it piracy. Ships attacked one another. Understandable in the chaos. We saved who we could, and what supplies we could, but we’re still figuring out what we picked up. We’re over-stocked on munitions, but I’ve offloaded most of the medical supplies, and food, to the convoy. Tea? It’s cold.”

  “Iced tea?” Tess said, taking a glass. “Good on ya.”

  “It’s powdered,” Adams said. “We’re out of coffee. But we have this in abundance. Salvaged from a food-freighter. We unloaded four shipping containers before she went down. Sadly, we found no real tea, but this’ll do in a squeeze. I spoke with your scientists when they came aboard. Dr Smilovitz gave me a general understanding of your mission. Dr Avalon just gave me a headache.”

  “She has that effect,” Tess said.

  “Can she really build a weapon to destroy the undead?” Adams asked. “It seems too good to be true.”

  “We’ve no reason to disbelieve her,” Tess said. “We canvassed some of the staff at the university in Canberra, and they confirmed she is as good as she says she is. Those two worked for the U.N. eliminating bio-chemical threats to the world before the outbreak.”

  “And they want to go to Colombia in search of the lab where it was made, or to New York to find patient zero?” Adams asked.

  “They say it would help reduce development time,” Tess said.

  “To think that this nightmare could end is simply too distracting. I want to believe it, but I don’t dare let myself.”

  “Tell me about it,” Tess said.

  “I do want to assist you,” Adams said. “However, it would be stretching our capabilities. As I say, we’re three months out of an austerity-refit. The majority of our systems were downgraded. We run solely on diesel now. That’s reduced our top speed, but increased our range. Even so, depending on weight and weather, our fuel tanks will run dry at seven thousand nautical miles.”

  “What’s that in land-speak?” Tess asked.

  “Thirteen thousand kilometres. From here to Cape Town is nearly three thousand kilometres. The Guajira Peninsula in Colombia is twelve thousand kilometres from Cape Town.”

  “And the Panama Canal is another two thousand kilometres from there,” Tess said. “Hopefully, that’ll be our way home, if the scientists could find what they need in Colombia.”

  “The canal was blocked,” Adams said. “I’ve had three separate reports confirming it, though none were first-hand. It’s unlikely we’ll be able to force a passage through that water-route. If we can’t refuel in Cape Town, we can’t go any further.”

  “What about the two fuel-freighters here?” Tess asked.

  “I’m sending them back to Australia. As I understand it, we’ve only got two other bulk fuel-transport ships in the entire Pacific. I’ll risk my crew to save these tens of thousands in Africa, but those ships are needed to supply the hospital generators for every island in the Pacific. We’re sailing alone to Cape Town. If we can refuel there, we’d only be able to travel westward for half our range. To continue on to Colombia, we’d first have to refuel on Ascension Island, and despite that island’s scientific work, it was primarily a military base. Why should it have survived when so many others were targeted? There’s no other circumstance you’d hear me say this about my command, but this is the wrong ship for the mission, Commissioner.”

  “It’s the only ship we’ve got,” Tess said. “We can’t fly, because we don’t know of any runways. We can’t parachute out over the target because the whole point is to get any research we find back to Oz. I could put the scientists on a plane, but it would only take them to Rodrigues. It could be another two days before we get back to Perth, and who knows how long before we find another ship? At least you’re travelling in the right direction.”

  “My orders are to protect the refugees,” Adams said. “The refugees are now heading in convoy to Cape Town, and so will we. If I had the range to reach Colombia, I would strongly consider making the voyage, but running adrift off the coast of Brazil helps no one.”

  “Fair dinkum. We were supposed to pick up a hundred U.S. Rangers in Perth, and find two U.S. frigates here. Plans change,” Tess said. “That’s probably rule-three of living through the apocalypse.”

  “I’d say it was rule-one,” Adams said. “There could be a ship anchored off Cape Town with the range you need. We could transfer fuel from one of the rescue ships. But that’s something to discuss when we get there. I just didn’t want to waste these scientists’ time. Which brings me to point two. They said they’re finishing off the theory for their weapon. If practical comes next, I’m hesitant to allow any experiments aboard my ship. We’ve been lucky so far, but I’ve sunk twenty-three ships overtaken by the infected. I appreciate the importance of this work, but I want to know in advance before they bring infected tissue samples aboard.”

  “Me too, so I’ll keep an eye on them.”

  “Good. Point three. Your pilot, Mick Dodson, is the father of the new deputy prime minister, and she is a childhood friend of yours, is that correct?”

  “I’d say I knew Mick better than Anna, but we all grew up in the same town. I’ve known them all my life.”

  “And you helped stop a coup that was organised by the same people who created the outbreak?”

  “Broadly speaking,” Tess said. “A couple of narco-barons were the muscle to some politicians who were behind all this. Two sisters, about sixty years old, called Herrera, and they’re about as evil as a human can get. I’m not sure who all of the politicians were, or which countries they were from, but seeing what happened a week ago, I’m guessing they represented each of the major nuclear powers. Closer to home, they were working with Sir Malcolm Baker to organise the coup in Australia.”

  “Him? Why am I not surprised? Tell me he’s dead.”

  “He’s in custody and is our primary source,” Tess said. “But we’ve had some secondary confirmation. Baker knows helping us is the only way he’ll avoid execution for war crimes. We can trust him on this, if absolutely nothing else.”

  “This coup, was it restricted to Australia?” Adams asked.

  “I believe so,” Tess said. “We’ve had no word of trouble in New Zealand, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I am, because that is the one duty which could see me ret
urn east.”

  “The coup’s over,” Tess said. “I’m still waiting on the judges to give us our score, but we definitely won. Back home, we’re worrying about industrial output and water shortages for farming, housing for refugees, and the long-term impacts of radiation. I’m sorry that I don’t know more about New Zealand, but the biggest international concern was how long it would take your people to build a new mega-refinery.”

  An alarm buzzed. “Ah,” Adams said. “My ten minutes are up.” She secured the cap on her flask. “No, lifting boxes is not the same as a run, and that’s not even close to a bout. You’ll travel with us?”

  “The general has made it clear he doesn’t want the confusion of command my presence would bring,” Tess said.

  “Then I’ll let you take the helicopter back ashore. Gather your people. Get ready to leave. I’ll have the freighters pull anchor within the hour. As soon as the last plane departs, so will we. The convoy should have departed at first light, and if we’ve gone, there’s no reason for the general to loiter.”

  Inhambane felt different on her return, though she’d only been away for an hour. The changes of the previous twenty-four hours were more obviously manifest from the empty rooftops. Either the refugees were at the airport waiting for the last set of flights, or aboard one of the mining vehicles where they guarded the best seat they’d found.

  The vehicles had formed a refugee column, rather than a military front, bolstered by almost every civilian vehicle remaining on the peninsula. Now they were parked outside the city walls, silent, except for the occasional crack of a rifle marking the ever-present danger approaching from the south. She found Colonel Hawker, Sergeant Oakes, Clyde, and Toppley at the airport guarding the refuelling tanker, and the tourist bus.

  “Trouble?” she asked after she’d jogged over from where the helicopter had set down.

  “Only interest,” Hawker said. “Road vehicles are in short supply. A group is aiming to take this tanker the second we leave.”

  “They’re going to miss the convoy’s departure,” Tess said.