Adjusting the sights, she scanned further down the road, hoping to spy the African Union convoy, but she saw five more ghouls instead. Five minutes away, at least. Drifting down the road, and now just passing a large pile of rubble and metal debris from a building destroyed by the falling plane. She lowered the rifle, slung it over her shoulder, and grabbed the hunter’s satchel. Inside were pre-loaded magazines for the rifle, and, in neatly stitched loops, dozens of brass cartridges at least ten centimetres in length. She slung the bag, picked up the double-barrelled gun, and made her way back to the roof-door.
When she reached the walkway over the road, she raised the rifle. The rubble around the demolished building had slowed the zombies’ approach, but three were now beyond, and still heading this way. Behind, were now another eight. No, nine as a near-naked zombie staggered through the broken frontage of a restaurant. Ten. Fifteen as more appeared from a side road on the other side of the street. She lowered the scope, ran on, and back to the toyshop.
“Rule-one, Zach,” she called “It’s me.”
As the door opened, she pushed her way inside. “The sniper’s dead,” she said. “So are two men in body-armour who were in the stairwell outside. The sniper was pinning us down, the other two were about to make entry and finish us off, except a zom jumped in on our side of the fight.”
“Zombies are helping us?” Zach asked.
“Figure of speech,” Tess said. “How’s Sullivan?”
“Alive,” the sailor whispered.
“Excellent. Can you walk?”
“We’ve built a stretcher,” Leo said. “We can carry her.”
“Are we moving?” Toppley asked.
“Zoms are inbound,” Tess said. “We’ve got a few minutes to get upstairs or get out of here. Thato, Lesadi, do you think there could be more than three of these food-thieves?”
“Not here,” Thato said.
“Not yet,” Lesadi said.
“There are more?” Tess asked.
“They camp to the north,” Lesadi said. “There’s too much food for them to move.”
“Good to know. Zoms inbound, zoms in the building, and more thieves could be on their way. We’re going back to the boat. Zach, Leo, get Sullivan onto the stretcher. Thato, Lesadi, you help them. Toppley, with me.”
“Is that a double-barrelled rifle?” Toppley asked.
“Is it?” Tess asked, taking it off her shoulder, and handing it to the former gun-runner. “I didn’t think they still made them.”
“By hand, to special order, yes,” Toppley said. “Where else would you expect to find an elephant gun, except in a country with elephants?”
Tess handed her the satchel. “There’s cartridges in the bag long enough to use as a knife. What kind of range does it have?”
“Sadly, they’re not designed for long range,” Toppley said. “They are, quite literally, for shooting a charging elephant. The parallel barrels are so you can fire a second shot quickly if your first doesn’t finish the job. Against a zom, I would imagine it would have a similar effect as a grenade. It’ll be interesting to find out.”
“Start with this,” Tess said, handing her the suppressed rifle. “You’ll watch our backs.”
Zach and Leo, and the two children, carried the stretcher outside.
“Zach at the front,” Tess said “I’ve got the back. Everyone else get ready to swap in. Anyone not carrying is watching for zoms. Move. You okay there, Zach?”
“Yeah, no worries,” he said.
The stretcher was heavy, and she was tired. Beset by memories of a different rooftop chase, an ocean and decade away.
“How did you make the stretcher?” she asked, focusing on the present to distract herself from the past.
“Backpacks and poles,” Leo said.
Two aluminium shelf-support poles held a lattice-work of giraffes. Ten long-necked animals, each belonged to a children’s backpack whose straps had been threaded together.
“The bags are from a movie, aren’t they?” she said, her eyes on Sullivan. “Do you remember, Pippa? That blockbuster animation released in Feb. Seems so long ago. The release was supposed to be last summer, but one of the voice-actors went off the deep end, nose first, and was arrested with a submachine gun atop a water ride in Florida. A sudden need to recast had led to a quieter, February release date.”
“Dunno, maybe,” Zach said.
Tess was talking for the sailor’s benefit, watching her eyes, looking for a response, but her gaze turned to Zach. For all the violence he’d seen in the last week, he was a month from being a skinny skip-school kid.
“Leo, swap with Zach.”
“No, I’m fine,” Zach said.
“You’ll get a twenty-second breather, and you’re swapping with me,” Tess said. “We’ve got five minutes to go, and have to keep up the pace.”
The kids were too small to sub in, except in a pinch, but Lesadi carried Sullivan’s rifle. Thato had Leo’s handgun.
Between their heavy footsteps, and her own laboured breathing, she couldn’t hear any shots from the suppressed rifle, but Toppley’s occasional satisfied hiss suggested she was hitting a target. Of course, that told her the enemy was now within shooting range.
“Four minutes behind us,” Toppley said. “About forty of them.”
The airplane engine was just ahead. Beyond were a few buildings, but not many before the massively sprawling, and zombie-infested, hotel. After that was the waterfront. It wasn’t far, but they weren’t moving fast enough.
“Thato, Lesadi, where can we shelter?”
“Not here,” Lesadi said. “Thato made too many traps.”
“You didn’t say it was too many before,” Thato said.
“We need shelter,” Tess said. “High up. Now. I’ll run to the boat, get the sailors, radio the ship, and arrange a proper extraction.”
“Commissioner!” Toppley called. “The extraction is coming to us!”
She heard it. An engine. Loud. Growing louder. She couldn’t turn. “Keep going, Leo,” she said.
“No, we can stop,” Toppley said.
“You sure?” Tess asked.
“One thousand percent,” Toppley said.
“Zach, take the stretcher,” Tess said.
He grabbed it instantly, clearly wanting to do something more useful than trailing along at the side.
Tess turned around and saw a road-dragon driving towards them. A high-wheeled dumper truck she vaguely recognised from Inhambane. But between it and them were the undead. Far more than she’d realised. Well over forty. Until the truck ploughed into the ghouls. Arm and leg, head and body, bone and blood, guts and skin flew as the zombies exploded with the impact. Others were dragged beneath the monstrous tyres as the truck barrelled on.
“Keep going!” Tess yelled to Leo and Zach, while the approaching truck followed a different instruction. It braked, sudden and loud, both doors opening. Out of the passenger side, Clyde leaped, rifle raised, firing at the partially crushed zombies even before his feet hit tarmac. Out of the driver’s side jumped a figure with a blue scarf draped over her head.
“Laila?” Tess asked.
“Good day again,” the nurse said, stopping next to the stretcher. “How was she hurt?”
“Shot in the side,” Tess said.
“Put her down please, Zach,” Laila said. “Can you hear me?”
“Her name’s Pippa,” Zach said.
“Pippa, can you hear me?” the nurse asked.
The sailor groaned. “Yeah.”
“Your ship is nearby, yes?” Laila asked.
“In the harbour, and we’ve a boat at the quay,” Tess said. “It’s about a three minute run.”
“We should hurry,” Laila said. “We need to get her to surgery.”
Oakes had followed Laila out the driver’s side of the truck, and had added his rifle fire to Clyde’s, killing the crawling undead as he and Clyde had backed up, away from the truck, and towards the stretcher.
“
Clyde, Nicko, grab the stretcher,” Tess said. “Go with Laila. Take the kids. Get to the boat. Send the sailors back here. We’ll hold this position.”
“I can carry her,” Oakes said. “Laila, would that be okay?”
“Haste is most welcome,” Laila said.
“I’ll leave you my rifle,” Oakes said, dropping his weapon before scooping up the injured sailor.
“Clyde, cover them. Go!” Tess said.
Sullivan in his arms, Oakes ran at a dead sprint, around the engine, Laila five paces behind.
“Go!” Clyde said, pushing Zach, and then the children after the soldier, leaving Leo, Toppley, and Tess alone, except for a long tail of crawling undead whose legs had been crushed by the dumper-tank’s charging advance.
“The truck,” Tess said, picking up Oakes’s rifle. “We’ll hold that position. Go.”
“We’re not retreating?” Leo asked, as they jogged to the cab, dripping with blood and skin from impact with so many of the undead. Oh-so-many, but not nearly enough.
“We can’t flee,” Tess said. “We need that food.”
On the roof of the cab, she looked behind the lip of the truck bed, filled with blankets, bedding, and even a few chairs. Beyond, she saw the undead.
“Teegan, give me the sniper rifle,” she said. She peered through the scope before lowering the weapon and detaching the suppressor. “About a hundred walking. Can’t say how many crawling. We’ll draw them here. Best we get inside the back of the truck where we’re less liable to fall off when they start thumping the tyres.”
“You want to lure them here?” Leo asked.
“We have to,” Tess said. “The African Union’s stuck inland somewhere. Must have been surrounded by zoms until this vehicle broke out. Now the undead are strung between the airport and waterfront. Oh, what a mess. How much ammo do we have?”
“Not enough,” Toppley said, as she opened the double-barrelled rifle and loaded two hand-length cartridges. “But this is a secure position. A sight more comfortable than the truck in the mine, eh, Commissioner? There are seats here.”
“Looks like they were turning into a bus during their—” Leo began, but the rest of his words were drowned by the explosion from the elephant gun. Toppley staggered back with the recoil, while her target’s head completely disappeared.
“I best sit down for this,” Toppley said.
“Hold your fire, Leo,” Tess said. “We’ve found our way of luring ’em here.”
“This gun can certainly do that,” Toppley said. “I think it could sink that warship.”
“Did you sell many of those?” Tess asked, as she watched the column of broken ghouls crawl and lurch nearer.
“None,” Toppley said. “I’ve seen a few in my travels. They were prized by the type of warlord obsessed with the size of his gun. Watch your ears.” Toppley pulled the trigger, and nearly fell from her seat as the shot reverberated between the metal walls. “I plead age,” she said, holding the rifle out to Leo. “The stock has been sprung to reduce recoil, but my bones aren’t as young as I’d like them to be.”
“The kids said the three thieves had friends,” Tess said.
“Thieves aren’t exactly our primary concern,” Leo said, taking a cartridge from Toppley. Below, the undead drew nearer.
“Hopefully not,” Tess said. “I was thinking about how the locals were fighting over food. Meaning there’s no other obvious or larger cache in this corner of the city, and we’ve got to feed the entire African Union convoy. Oh, we really did walk into a mess.”
Leo raised the rifle. “But Sullivan is alive. The African Union is here. And zombies can’t shoot back.”
After four thunder-quake shots from the elephant gun, it was retired in favour of the less ear-shattering assault rifles. Unspoken, a rhythm developed. Each firing in a separate arc, and ignoring the crawling undead now around and beneath the truck, they methodically mowed down the undead, and were almost out of ammo when Clyde and Oakes returned with one of the sailors who’d been guarding the boat, Baxter.
All three clambered atop the wrecked airplane engine. As Tess, Toppley, and Leo ceased fire, the crawling undead emerged from beneath the truck, squirming towards the gunshots from atop the charred engine. Even as they died, the air filled with a different sound, a second engine, belonging to another bone-crunching earth-mover. Aboard were Hawker, Mackay, and ten African Union soldiers.
Tess righted one of the salvaged chairs, and sat. “It’s not over. Not yet, but I reckon we’ve earned a breather.”
Chapter 21 - Never Leave the Living with Regret
V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa
“Sullivan’s dead,” Hawker said, holding up the radio. He stood atop the cab of Tess’s truck, having climbed down from his when he’d run out of targets to shoot. “She died on the operating table. There was nothing more you could do.”
Tess nodded. “That’s always what we’d tell the family,” she said. “In the outback, at a remote road accident, or at an even more remote cattle station, it always took a while for us to respond. Took a while longer to get the patient back to the hospital. Unless you truly had to give more details, you’d say they died in the operating theatre. Never leave the living with regret, that’s one of Mick’s rules.”
“In this case, it’s true,” Hawker said.
“Are the kids okay?” she asked.
“They’re back on the ship,” Hawker said. “Avalon is keeping an eye on Zach. Glenn Mackay knew her much longer,” he added, pointing to his own truck. “But this isn’t the first death among the crew since the outbreak.”
“Probably not the last, either,” Tess said. “How many zombies are we dealing with?”
“Immediately? Just under a thousand,” Hawker said. “They followed the African Union trucks to the airport.”
“The kids said their people were at the airport,” Tess said. “How many are there?”
“Locals? About a hundred. Twenty kids, about thirty teens, thirty adults, twenty elderly. Seem to be two groups of families and neighbours who merged together. One from around here, one from a township in the north. Those two kids were the magnet which brought the two communities together.”
“They can’t be the leaders,” Tess said.
“More like the peace-brokers,” Hawker said. “As I heard it, they camped out around here, but were chased away a week ago. Relocated to a stadium near the airport. Laila drove right past them yesterday. Zoms followed. They relocated to the ruins of the airport last night.”
“The airport’s ruined?” Tess asked. “How badly?”
“Unusable,” Hawker said. “Couple of large craters on the runway. Fire spread to most of the terminal. Most buildings are unstable.”
“Then our priority must be getting everyone out of that airport, and then to make contact with the other locals.”
“The airport-evac is underway,” Hawker said. “There are two civilian helicopters there. Recent arrivals. The captain’s already got mechanics inbound, on the way to repair them. We’ll airlift everyone to Robben Island.”
“Three helicopters?” Tess asked, reflexively looking skyward. “But that’ll take… I don’t know how long. Months, probably, to move those thousands of African Union soldiers.”
Hawker shook his head. “You don’t know? Tess, most of the A.U. aren’t here. Only Laila and her advance team have arrived.”
“How many?” she asked.
“Twenty-eight.”
It took twenty minutes for Clyde to declare the area clear, twenty more to load the toy-store food into the back of the truck, and just as long to drive back to the marina’s gate. Leaving Bruce and the African Union soldiers to guard the food, Tess climbed aboard a boat, and returned to the ship.
It was Dr Avalon who met her with a Geiger counter in hand.
“Why the Geiger counter?” Tess asked.
“Do I really need to explain?” Avalon asked, as she swept the ominously clicking detector across Tess’s
arms and down her body. “You’ll have to strip, and go through the decontamination shower. There are clean clothes on the other side. Your old clothes go into this sack, and drop them over the side. I assumed Leo would have noticed.”
“Noticed what?” Tess asked. “I thought the radiation readings were fine.”
“Laila drove through a hot zone,” Avalon said.
“Oh. How bad was it?” she asked.
“You’re fine. Or you will be after you change. Rinse. Do not scrub. Understand? You’re having a shower, not a wash. Do not abrade the skin.”
Ten minutes later, and feeling as if she’d never be clean again, she was escorted to the captain’s quarters.
“Commissioner, please come in,” Adams said.
It was a surprisingly small cabin, though the lack of a bed suggested it came in two parts, with the second concealed behind the concertina-door. This was an office as much as a living space, evidenced by the desk at which Captain Adams had been writing.
Tess crossed to one of the three armchairs. Low to the ground, with thin arms, they screamed a government-issue design, with a government-mandated lack of comfort. But the Geiger counter, as much as the battle, had left her drained.
“I’m sorry about Sullivan,” Tess said.
“It’s the risk we all take,” Adams said. “She wanted to become a librarian.”
“In the navy?” Tess asked.
“No. She was good at her job. Diligent. Trusted. Excelled in every task. She had a destiny as a leader. A week into our voyage, an engineer’s shortcut created a short circuit. A fire broke out below decks. She was first in, last out, saved two lives, and saved us from having to be ignominiously towed back to port. When I suggested she consider joining the officer-track, she told me no. When her term was up, she wanted to become a librarian because she found the empty ocean terrifying. She did a stellar job at not revealing it. I’d arranged for her to transfer ashore, to my old command in hydrographics. Then came the outbreak. Now I’m trying to write to her mother. Explaining…” She paused and looked at what she’d written before picking up the sheet, and scrunching it into a ball. “I’m trying to justify the cost. But there’s no form of words that can salve that pain.”
Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 20