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

by Tayell, Frank

  “I don’t believe they intend to go south,” Toppley said. “I had a word with them, making certain they understood the bus belonged to the nurses. They claim interest in the fuel truck for reasons they wouldn’t entirely explain, but I think one of them is a pilot.”

  “They’re hoping there’s fuel left, and they can fly out of here?” Tess asked.

  “Not from here,” Toppley said. “But they wouldn’t say where they thought they might find a plane.”

  “We’ll be getting aboard the helicopter, and then the ship,” Tess said. “We’ll leave as soon as the plane takes off.”

  “Then the nurses should join the convoy now,” Hawker said. “If they wait until we’re gone, I don’t like their odds if the truck-thieves decide to take their bus as well.”

  “Where are Laila and Elaina?” Tess asked.

  “With the kids,” Clyde said.

  The handful of nurses remaining in the city were scattered through the crowd, while Elaina was at the front of the pack of waiting children. They sat on the ground while she stood, waving her arms around to the befuddlement of most of the young teens, but to the amusement of some others.

  “Oh, hi Commish,” Elaina said, suddenly freezing and blushing with embarrassment. That produced smiles from even more of the children.

  “G’day,” Tess said. “Should I ask what that was?”

  “Language lessons,” Elaina said. “I mime the animal, and they have to teach me the correct word for it.”

  “Ah. And that was a squid?”

  “A giraffe,” she said, which received a chuckle, but a louder laugh after the answer had been translated. “Is everything okay?”

  “Absolutely,” Tess said, speaking loud enough the children could hear. “The plane should be here soon. When the kids are aboard, the convoy will go south, and the ship will depart. We’re sailing south down to Cape Town where we’ll meet the convoy and we’ll secure a safe harbour for the rescue fleet.”

  “Bianca went to Rodrigues, didn’t she?” Elaina asked.

  “Someone had to stay with the kids,” Tess said. “She didn’t want Mick to think it had to be him.”

  “There’s a lot of children,” Elaina said.

  “Quite a few of Laila’s nurses have gone to Rodrigues,” Tess said.

  “It’s still a lot of children,” Elaina said. “Right now, we should be calling those nurses patients, but they’ll be stretched dealing with all the wounded. Bee’s lovely, but last week she thought, to make an omelette, you shook the egg before cracking it.”

  “Really?” Tess said. “Well, now you’ve got me wanting to try it.”

  “Let me go help her,” Elaina said. “Please. I’m not shirking, but I’m supposed to be looking after children. It’s what I’m good at.”

  “It’s where you’re supposed to be,” Tess said. “Good on ya, and good luck. I’ll see you back in Perth.”

  Laila was at the other end of the line of children, changing a bandage on a young girl’s arm.

  Tess waited until she was finished, then motioned her out of earshot.

  “We’re sailing to Cape Town,” Tess said. “You and your nurses should come with us.”

  “No, thank you,” Laila said. “It is kind of you to make the offer, but we can’t travel with you. Do you see the cathedral?”

  Tess turned. From the edge of the airport’s runway, it was just possible to make out the crumbling top of its spire. “I do.”

  “My aunt had a house just behind and to the left,” Laila said. “When the zoo closed, she came here and set up a cab company for tourists and a shelter for women.”

  “She’s why you came here?” Tess asked.

  “When the infected reached us, we had to go somewhere. We gathered the children from the wards, and drove here. But she was dead before we arrived. Infected. Locked in her bedroom.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tess said.

  “We’ve all lost someone,” Laila said. “We’ve all lost nearly everyone. Most of us don’t realise it yet, but this is a new beginning. Everyone left belongs to everyone else. We are one people again, as we have not been since the very earliest days. My aunt had a saying. She was a zoologist. Trained in Cairo,” she added with a hint of pride. “She said that there is a type of man who, when cleaning an elephant’s tusks, will begin at the tail. The general is one such man.”

  “The kind of bloke who doesn’t lock his car, then yells at the cops when it’s stolen, right?” Tess asked. “I know what you mean, but you’re in danger of having that bus stolen. If you are determined to travel with the convoy, go now. We’ll stay with the kids until the plane comes. Go on. We’ll see you in Cape Town.”

  Part 2

  A Copper Log

  The Personal Journal of Tess Qwong

  18th March

  Chapter 13 - A Commissioner’s Diary

  Journals are written by kids; I’ve read too many of them in my career. Last time I kept one, I was a teen. But Anna wanted a report on what the world was like beyond our home shores, so I’ll make some notes. Besides, for once, there are no other calls on my time. The U.S. Army Rangers weren’t in Perth, but Anna knows that. Only one warship was anchored off Mozambique, and the refugees were far from evacuated to safety. But Mick’s carried that news back to Australia.

  What can I say about the ship? It floats. Beyond that, I’ll report back when I’ve seen more than the deck our cabins are on. What can I say about the crew? So far, I can name six, including the three whose names I learned before we left Inhambane yesterday.

  After we came aboard, and after we’d pulled anchor, I spoke with the captain again, as did Bruce. Separately. The rest of our people were quizzed by members of the crew. Captain Adams is making sure our stories add up. Specifically, the story about the coup, Sir Malcolm Baker, and the conditions in Australia and the Pacific. I can’t blame her for being suspicious, or concerned about her own island home.

  We were introduced to the crew remotely, over the address-system, as police and scientists hunting those responsible for the outbreak and looking for their lab. But the captain also said we were catching a ride with the Te Taiki only as far as Cape Town. She wants a weapon more than revenge, but understands the value in both. She wants to help us, but her crew want to go home. My impression, so far, is that she’s probing their feelings, testing whether they would accept an extension to their voyage. So it’ll come down to them, and to whether we find fuel in Cape Town. If not, then I’ll take one of the rescue ships, assuming there are enough to spare.

  It’s twenty-three hours since we departed Inhambane, most of which I’ve spent asleep. Oh, it’s been glorious. Dr Avalon and Leo are sharing a cabin at the end of the corridor. I’ve assigned Zach to be their assistant. I didn’t tell him he’s spying on the scientists in case they run any practical experiments, but I’m certain he’ll tell me if they are. I don’t think the Canadians brought infected tissue samples aboard, but they’re the kind of people who’ll ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

  Hawker, Oakes, Clyde, and Zach have been given a four-bunk room that had been a storage locker. I’ve been given a one-bunk cabin in which the table and a cabinet were removed, and an extra bunk installed. That’s been given to Teegan Toppley.

  “It’s smaller than a cell,” Toppley said, on seeing it, “but I appreciate having a view.”

  “A bed is all I need,” I said.

  “There are clean clothes in the locker, ma’am,” the sailor detailed to show us to our quarters said. Her name’s Sullivan, and her primary duty has something to do with the helicopter. I think she was the sailor operating the machine gun during the battle at the bridge. “If you bag what you’re wearing, I’ll take it to the laundry.”

  “There’s a laundry?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Sullivan said, just about managing to conceal a smirk.

  “Far better than a cell,” Toppley said.

  “A cell?” Sullivan said.

  “Ah, young lad
y, I am the most notorious criminal in Australia.”

  “You are?” Sullivan asked.

  “She’s winding you up,” I said. “Sullivan, yes?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Able Rate, ma’am.”

  “Do you possess a first name to go along with your rank?” Toppley asked.

  “Pippa, ma’am.”

  “I’m no one’s ma’am,” Toppley said. “Call me Teegan.”

  “Teegan Toppley?” Sullivan asked, realisation slowly dawning.

  “Ah, so my reputation has ventured across the Tasman Sea,” Toppley said. “Why don’t you show me where this mystical laundry is, and I shall tell you the story of my life, including those details the papers weren’t gracious enough to print.”

  If she’d asked, I’d have told Toppley to shelve her past because you can never overtake your reputation, but it was absolutely too late. After she’d gone, I barely managed to get my boots off before I fell asleep.

  I’d forgotten the sheer pleasure of clean clothes. Back in Canberra, the hotel had its own laundry, but I rarely had the time to use it. Ms Hoa Nguyen, the elderly public servant who’d adopted Anna as her personal project, was insistent that a politician should look the part, and so found clothes for Anna. I stole a few of them, and took others from the airport or wherever, and whenever, I could. Dirties were dumped.

  I didn’t even have to do the laundry here. Toppley did. She’s making herself useful. Making friends. If I get clean clothes out of it, who am I to argue?

  So what else can I say about the ship? A laundry. Showers. Soap. Clean clothes. Food! Room service, in fact, brought to the cabin by Toppley and waiting for me when I woke. Sandwiches made with actual bread. Some of the instant tea, kept cold in a flask. I’d have preferred hot coffee, but only out of habit. In the day since we left Inhambane, I’ve eaten. I’ve slept. I’ve spoken briefly with the captain, and a little longer with my team. Mostly, I’ve slept, barely disturbed by Toppley’s snores.

  Cape Town is two thousand kilometres from Inhambane by air, two and a half thousand by road, and at least two thousand seven hundred for the ship, depending on how close we stay to the coast. The ship can make twenty-seven knots, but is most efficient at seventeen knots, or thirty kilometres an hour. We can travel at night, while Laila won’t. She’ll be delayed by obstacles in the road, and by the undead. We’ll be slowed by tides and currents. Assuming one balances the other, we’ll reach Cape Town around the same time. For us, it’s the second full day aboard the ship, the third day of sailing, with around seventy-two hours to go.

  19th March

  Chapter 14 - Daily Exercise

  With there being a limit to how much time anyone can spend in bed, even me, when Toppley got up to help with the sailors’ chores, I finally dragged myself up. A long shower later, and I went hunting for the mess.

  I’ve become lost in the never-never more times than I’d like Mick to know about, but you don’t find many mazes in the outback. The heat, the thirst, the dry wind, and, of course, the spiders: it would take a particularly sick mind to add high walls and dead-ends to the experience. But Korea has, or had, the largest maze in the world, a visit to which was on my kick-list. Can’t see I’ll ever get to visit now. But I now know where maze builders learn their craft: designing the interior of ships.

  I kept walking in what I was sure was the direction of daylight, and ended up back at my cabin, where I found Toppley, reading.

  “Weren’t you helping in the laundry?” I asked.

  “Sadly, my reputation arrived before me,” she said, raising her eyes from the page. “I hoped I could pre-emptively explain my past actions, but too many of these sailors worked anti-piracy routes in the Pacific.”

  “They were hunting you?” I asked.

  “None are that old,” she said with a weary sigh. “I do suddenly feel so old. It’s inescapable, surrounded by so much youth, not to imagine how I might have lived a different life, and be looking forward to a different future. One with a little house near the sea, waiting for my grandchildren to visit.”

  “You’re not that old,” I said. “But I’d be lying if I said I don’t have those same glimpses of an alternate future. They’re a burden, a nightmare in their own way. Yet we are where we are. We are who we had to become in order to survive. You were framed, weren’t you? And the cops were after you? If you’d not run, you’d have been caught, and without any chance of singing a few years off your sentence.”

  “Ah, no. Today’s particular dollop of regret was served by wondering if I could have enlisted as an alternative to jail-time, before remembering the ADF didn’t allow women to serve in combat back then.”

  “Then take solace in not being so old that military service was still being offered as an alternative to prison even when you were young,” I said. “But it is a punishment in the here-and-now, so in a way, you got your wish.”

  “Yes, indeed, I’ve become victim of that ancient curse of my dreams coming true,” she said. “Regret is a path I’ve walked so often I no longer need a map. But I made my choices. I lived my life. Unfortunately, it has caught up to me here, but maintaining a low profile is an easy price to pay. Dr Avalon was kind enough to loan me a book for entertainment.”

  “She doesn’t strike me as a fan of fiction,” I said.

  “Look at the cover,” Toppley said.

  “Survival on Titan, by… by L. Smilovitz. Leo wrote it?”

  “He did. Dr Avalon carries copies around with her. Yet when I asked how long they’d been a couple, she said they weren’t.”

  “They’re the definition of complicated,” I said. “So Leo wrote a proper book?”

  “A trilogy about the struggle for survival in a human settlement on Titan after Earth is destroyed.”

  “No fooling? How is it?”

  “A little technical in places. But it works on multiple levels, one of which being that the love interest is called Dr Ava London.”

  “Strewth. He’s not subtle.”

  “Quite. But once you get past where his subconscious desires have spilled onto the page, it is thoroughly enjoyable. I’m up to chapter seven where the dashing pilot, Leonard Miles, is attempting to save their hydroponic harvest.”

  “He called his hero Leonard? Crikey. I’ve got to have a read of that when you’re finished. I was hunting for breakfast, and then I was going to check in on the team.”

  “I believe they went to the gym,” Toppley said.

  “Now I feel even worse for having a lie-in,” I said. “Come with me. Let’s stretch our old legs together.”

  With Toppley’s help, we found the gym. Still crowded with boxes, it was now packed with Leo, Clyde, Zach, and Nicko.

  “You lot having a workout before brekkie?” I asked.

  “Breakfast is over,” Zach said. “You missed our slot.”

  “We have a slot?” I asked.

  “That’s why I never booked a cruise-holiday,” Clyde said. “The whole point of a vacation is for your time to be your own.”

  “Yeah, ships are like prisons,” Zach said.

  “Not entirely,” Toppley said. “Trust me.”

  “Fine. It’s like school,” Zach said.

  “Sorry, mate, it’s actually a lot like work,” Clyde said.

  “Speaking of which, that’s why we’re here,” Leo added, holding up a clipboard. “Commander Tusitala asked us to catalogue what’s in these crates. I think she’s hoping we’ll find more food.”

  “It is good to be useful,” Toppley said.

  “And our task is to determine whether the contents of these boxes are useful, or to be thrown over the side,” Leo said.

  “They don’t know what they brought aboard?” I asked.

  “Not the specifics,” Leo said. “And they don’t have a complete list of what went to the fuel-freighters, or to the convoy.”

  “Where should I start?” Toppley asked.

  “By the bike,” Leo said. “Write the contents on the box’s lid, and the sides,
and then on the clipboard. If it’s edible, it’ll go to the galley.”

  “If it’s explosive, tell Clyde,” Nicko added.

  “He’s not kidding,” Clyde said. “They found a box of C4 in the med-lab, among a crate of single-use syringes.”

  “How’d that happen?” I asked.

  “Commander Tusitala is finding out,” Clyde said. “You don’t want to be in her way this morning. That’s why we’re glad to be hiding in here.”

  “Me, I’m volunteering to clear enough space I can get in a work-out,” Nicko said. “It’s good to stay trim.”

  “I told him he should have a kid,” Clyde said. “Best all-body work-out you can get.”

  “You’re married,” Oakes said. “You can get away with letting yourself go. Bloke in his prime like me has got to maintain his image.”

  Having a kid is exhausting. I know that from the weekends I’d keep an eye on Bobby for Liu and Scott. But it’s not the same as a full-body workout, particularly when snack-time is the cornerstone of maintaining your sanity. A month of irregular rations has kept Clyde lean, if not trim. Nicko, by contrast, is a bloke who buys his t-shirts a size too small. I won’t say he’s consumed by vanity, but it has been dining on his ego. He’s got that self-confidence of a young man who’s swiftly risen to the peak of his profession without ever having taken too big a tumble. What I know, and what he’ll certainly learn long before he hits thirty, no matter how fast you rise, it’s the landing that hurts.

  “Did I miss breakfast, then?” I asked.

  “We’ve got some iced tea, Tess,” Clyde said. “And there’s always some of those oat-bars.”

  “That’ll do,” I said, and took the flask to a pair of stacked boxes that would sub for a seat.

  “Found it!” Zach said, putting the lid back on a box. He pulled out a pen, and began writing on the lid. “Climbing rope.”

  “Perfect,” Leo said.