“You’re asking the wrong bloke,” he said. “They’re computers, aren’t they? Can we spare some of our own, plug them into the cables?”
“Do we have the software?” I said, putting the camera-phone away. “Maybe we could run the ship from the engine room.”
“We’d have to dump the rotten cargo,” he said. “The commander’s waving, pointing back to the boat.”
“I guess that’s an answer to whether there’s fuel aboard,” I said. “So no fuel, no bridge controls, and a hold full of rotten fish. Time is fuel, and we’ve just wasted a couple of hours and a couple of hundred kilometres finding out there’s nothing here.”
31st March
Chapter 32 - America
I thought Natal was in South Africa. Shows what I know. Turns out it’s a city in Brazil, about thirty kilometres south of Cape Sāo, the most easterly point on the continent. Or it was. Cape Sāo still is. Natal is gone. The steel skeletons of the skyscrapers remain, twisted, shattered, broken, jutting skywards from the tomb of rubble that once was a city of a million people.
We stopped offshore. The helicopter took flight with the intention of buzzing inland to survey the damage, but the captain recalled the bird the moment the cameras captured an image of the crater.
Big. Obvious. Easily identifiable to everyone watching the screens erected in the mess. I went on deck to watch the helicopter return. I stayed there after the ship began to accelerate, heading due north, letting the rising wind kick away the fog. I wasn’t the only person who’d come outside for air.
“They’ll be dead in a few days,” Zach said.
“Who will?” I asked.
“The zombies in the ruins,” he said. “Doc Flo says they’ll be dead soon. Hundreds were crawling over the rubble. South America’s not going to be any better than South Africa, is it?”
“Doesn’t look that way,” I said.
“I was thinking,” he said. “If we could find a plane to fly to Auckland, wouldn’t other people already have done that? Wouldn’t there be lots of pilots in New Zealand, and no planes left in South America?”
“Maybe,” I said. “But we won’t know until we look.”
“Yeah, but if there are survivors in South America, I bet they’ve headed for the mountains. That’s where we should look for them. It’s stupid going up to Panama.”
“Someone has to,” I said.
“That’s what Doc Flo told the captain. Someone had to go, so it should be us.”
“She told the captain?” I asked, leaning forward. “Water looks oily.”
“There’s an upturned tanker to the north,” Zach said. “The helicopter spotted it. It’s mostly submerged.”
“An oil tanker?”
“Guess so.”
“Kills the view, doesn’t it?” I said.
“And the wildlife,” Zach said. “With the radiation, this bit of ocean will become another dead-zone. Currents are only going to make it worse.”
“Is that what Dr Avalon said?”
“Doc Leo. He said there’ll be loads of oceanic dead-zones, and more on land. They’ll last for centuries. South Africa, South America, why target those?”
“D’you know why we call in a psychiatrist when dealing with a serial killer? You need a specialist to get inside the mind of someone like that. You wouldn’t commit genocide. I wouldn’t commit genocide. Trying to understand someone who willingly would doesn’t come naturally. When did Avalon tell the captain we should go to Panama?”
“Back in Mozambique. Just after we arrived and you sent me and them onto the ship.”
“Back then?” I said. “Ah, there’s nothing to see out here.” So I went inside to find Dr Avalon.
I found her, and Leo, in their cabin, reviewing images of Natal.
“It’s an interesting crater,” Leo said. “From its size, we can determine the size of the blast, and from that, the warhead, and so get a guess at who fired the missile.”
“How would knowing that help us?” I asked, closing the door, and leaning against it.
“All information is useful, Commissioner,” Avalon said. “Though not always immediately.”
“Right. Sure. That’s a good answer,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“It’s quieter than the bridge,” Leo said.
“Sorry, my fault. Bad question,” I said. “Why are you on this ship? Why did we come west?”
“To find the lab where the virus was made,” Leo said.
“You’ve done this before, right? You’ve inspected labs where people have been playing around with deadly viruses. Like with Ebola in the DRC?”
“That was a waste of a trip,” Avalon said.
“Interesting choice of words,” I said. “You know the kind of troops required for seizing a remote compound. A hundred U.S. Rangers, say. Or the sailors and Marines from two U.S. frigates?”
“It’s impossible to tell you what we’ll need until we know who is there,” Avalon said.
“Precisely,” I said. “But back in Mozambique, after I packed you two aboard, you told the captain it was important we head to Panama. At that point, you knew that we wouldn’t have the military personnel to seize a narco-compound in Colombia.”
“We can still destroy it,” Leo said.
“I hope so,” I said. “But we don’t need you two aboard for that. You sold Anna on the idea of heading to Britain and Manhattan for the vaccine and for patient zero, but as part of your work to build a weapon. After we found Sir Malcolm Baker, we compromised on Colombia. Back in Canberra, I was too exhausted to think clearly, and too happy to trust you two and your expert opinions. I didn’t begin to understand the technical difficulties of this kind of trip until Captain Adams explained them to me. But you two would have known. It’s numbers, isn’t it? Distance and range. You would have known both the moment you stepped aboard this ship. Before we left Mozambique you knew we’d never reach the Northern Hemisphere. We’d never get to New York. You told the captain our goal should be Panama. Not Colombia because you also knew we didn’t have the people to take that facility. So answer me this. Yes or no. Are you working on a weapon?”
“Yes,” Leo said.
“No,” Avalon said.
“Leo, quiet,” I said, holding up a hand. “Dr Avalon, explain yourself. You aren’t working on a weapon?”
“I’ve finished,” she said.
“When did you finish?” I asked.
“That’s an impossible—” Leo began.
“Zip it,” I said. “Dr Avalon?”
“I had three candidates while we were still in Canada. In Canberra, I gathered most of the data I needed.”
“You were done before we departed,” I said. “Why aren’t you testing it in a lab in the outback?”
“Because that would be utterly insane,” Avalon said. “The old world is gone. The old civilisations are history. Do you really want the first great achievement of our new age to be the construction of a weapon of mass destruction?”
“If it would bring a swift end to the horror, yes,” I said.
“It won’t,” she said.
“That’s not your decision,” I said.
“Whose should it be?” she said.
“The—” I began, and stopped, because this woman doesn’t so much walk-the-earth-lightly as tunnel beneath the surface. “Okay, fine, explain to me why you lied to Oswald and parliament, the U.N., to Anna, me, and to everyone aboard this ship.”
“I didn’t lie,” Avalon said. “I can develop a biochemical agent which will destroy the undead. It will also destroy most other living things in its path. Mammals, birds, trees. Probably even the grass. Millions of the uninfected would have been killed as collateral damage. Entire states, entire nations, would become deserts. Including from infection, total loss of life would have stood at two billion. More would die from starvation. But the zombies would be gone. Rivers would still flow. New trees could be planted. Old fields could be ploughed.”
“Two billion?�
� I asked.
“I thought it would be closer to one billion,” Leo said. “Depending on what kind of relief effort could be mounted. But this was before the nuclear bombs.”
“The nuclear madness made infection-elimination impossible and unnecessary,” Avalon said. “Why bother expending resources to turn North America into a desert? There are fewer than fifty million people in secure redoubts in the Pacific, with an estimated further fifty million trapped in day-to-day survival elsewhere in that ocean. At best, three-quarters will be alive next year. It will take a century before the Americas are home to more than scavengers.”
“A lot of the land will be irradiated and toxic anyway,” Leo said. “Destroying more wouldn’t help anyone.”
“Okay,” I said, doing my best to keep my anger in check. “So why don’t you take your idea and develop it, refine it, make something a little less apocalyptic?”
“It’s pointless,” Avalon said.
“It’d take too long,” Leo said. “In six months, the zoms will die.”
“No,” Avalon said. “In six months, it will become evident that they have been dying all along. The human body is notoriously fragile. The infected can’t exist forever. Within six months, this will become obvious to most. Within a year, it will be indisputable.”
“That’s a nice theory,” I said. “It doesn’t answer my question. Why aren’t you in a lab?”
“The resources required are better deployed developing medicines and delivering them,” Avalon said.
“That’s not your call to make,” I said.
“We’ve met politicians the world over,” Leo said. “If we were given a lab, we’d get given twice the resources we asked for. But it would take about six months to develop something for wide-scale distribution. We’d be given a fleet of aircraft for deployment, and an entire city for manufacture. Six months is the minimum. Then we’d go hunting for some large group of zoms. Such a large group we’d be bound to see some just dropping down dead. But having put a million people to work to build the weapon, it would have to be deployed, because that’s how politics works. We’d kill the zoms, and create a desert. The people back home would still be dying from dysentery and easily treatable infections. But as long as Flo and I are working on a weapon, here or in Australia, everyone else will be focused on rebuilding the technologies that will ensure, a century from now, those abandoned countries will be repopulated.”
“You’ve both missed your calling,” I said. “With that kind of fanatical belief in your own abilities, you should have run for office. So we’re going to Panama. We won’t go any further. Not to New York. Certainly not to Britain. We’ll be back in Perth or Auckland in three weeks. What then? Will you refuse to develop the weapon?”
“No one will want it,” Avalon said.
“This voyage will dispel all the false hope there are bastion-cities and hold-out ports,” Leo said. “The true reality of our situation, of the extent of the radiation, of the scarcity of workable farmland, of the paucity of human life, will be evident to everyone.”
“I’m not going to argue the point,” I said. “But I still don’t see why you’re aboard. Why not take the offer of an outback lab and sabotage your own work?”
“There are a few other moderately capable scientists in Australia,” Avalon said. “They would have been assigned to us, and they would have noticed.”
“Just remember I’m a cop, and you have confessed to treason-level fraud,” I said. “A little less of the self-satisfied snark would be advisable.”
“If there is a lab in Colombia, we have to make sure it’s destroyed,” Leo said.
“Bruce could have seen to that,” I said.
“No, he would have been given orders to collect as much evidence as he could,” Leo said. “Isn’t that what our mission officially is? We know politicians. But we know warlords, too. We have to ensure the labs, the notes, and any samples, are completely destroyed.”
“The scientists as well,” Avalon added. “There can be no Operation Paperclip after this disaster.”
“Let me show you the radiation map,” Leo said. “I’ve got a model of the five-year projections for ocean toxicity and its impact on inland desertification.”
“No, the images from Natal were enough for one day. So your personal mission is to destroy the research into the undead, and delay any development of a weapon? You’ve certainly succeeded in the second.”
I let myself out, and returned to my cabin; I didn’t dare let myself fall into a conversation with anyone. I should really question the scientists in more detail, but there’ll be time for that. For now, I don’t fully understand why they lied to us, or fully believe they’re telling the complete truth.
I assumed we were all playing for the same team, but it turns out we’re playing a different game. Their game is the same one they’ve been playing all their professional lives: keeping WMDs out of the hands of anyone mad enough to use them.
If the HMAS Adelaide had been in Mozambique, would we have skipped Cape Town and sailed straight for Colombia and then on to New York? If O.O. had said no to this mission, would those two have spent six months in a lab running into dead ends?
The press would have demanded progress reports, wouldn’t they? Everyone in Australia would be listening to each news bulletin in hope of a miracle. Okay, fair dinkum, them being here means there’s no false hope. Making it worse for me personally is that I think Anna agrees with them. Since O.O. is the bloke yanking on the levers of power, does it matter what she thinks? If the people have been told a weapon is possible, won’t they demand one is developed? Will a few months delay be enough to dampen demand? And what if Smilovitz and Avalon are wrong? What if the zoms aren’t all dying?
Who knows? But it doesn’t matter. The longer I spend replaying what they said, the more I understand what they were saying. Not about the zoms. Six months? I’ll believe it when I see it. No, it was what they said about desertification and oceanic dead-zones. The planet is in a worse state than I realised.
Part 5
Two Sisters, One Brother
South America
1st April
Chapter 33 - Bienvenue à la Belle France
Dégrad des Cannes, French Guiana
“Third time’s the charm,” Tess Qwong said, her words nearly lost beneath the engine’s burr as the boat buzzed through the silt-laden Mahury River. Ahead lay the concrete and steel pier of the French military base, just east of the coastal city of Dégrad des Cannes, in French Guiana.
Three times they’d attempted to go ashore on Brazil’s northern coast: Sāo Luis, Belem, and Macapa on the estuary of the Amazon River itself. Four, if you counted Natal.
“Welcome to Europe, Zach,” Clyde said.
“Yeah, I’m not falling for that. I know this is South America,” Zach said, his eyes scanning the treetops.
“French Guiana is part of the European Union, so that makes this Europe,” Clyde said.
“Fifty percent correct,” Dr Avalon said. “Which is a good grade for a soldier.”
“Ex-soldier,” Clyde said.
“This is really in the European Union?” Zach asked.
“It really is,” Clyde said.
“Was,” Avalon said.
“That’s just weird,” Zach said. He swatted at the swirling cloud of insects that, almost universally among the passengers aboard the boat, had selected him as their appetizer.
The humidity lay so thick, Tess was surprised the boat didn’t defy gravity and sail up to the brush-thin clouds. Those were meagre, wispy remains of the sky-slashing storm. Night arrived two hours too early. Rain had hammered the deck, dense enough to swim through. But after ten minutes, the storm grew bored and headed inland, leaving nothing but collar-sponge humidity, and a two-week-forgotten-corpse odour. Some of that stench was caused by the small boat churning through the surface-layer of silt, washed into the river from either side of the wide river. Mixed in, inescapable, was the smell of death.
/> “There! Caught one,” Avalon said, holding out her hand. On her palm, and nearly as big, was an iridescent green insect with protruding front legs, long body, and bulbous head. “I shall call him… Leonard. Or is it more of a Zachariah?”
“Is it dangerous?” Zach asked.
“It can’t be,” Avalon said. “The world’s ten million most poisonous insects are all found in Australia. This isn’t Australia, is it? No, it’s Europe, and there are no poisonous insects in Europe.”
“Fine, this is Europe, but that was the Amazon River we sailed past this morning, wasn’t it?” Zach said. “Aren’t there frogs there so poisonous that one lick and you’ll cark it?”
“Are you confusing dart frogs and river toads?” Avalon said. “You shouldn’t lick them. I wouldn’t advocate licking any animal. I’m sure Dr Dodson has a rule to that effect.”
“Not even the weirdest of anthropologists need to be given that warning,” Tess said. “What kind of insect is it?”
“A form of treehopper, a relative of the cicada. It isn’t toxic when in the mating stage of its lifecycle, which it is now. Which specific form of treehopper, I’d need a little longer to ascertain.”
“Is this really part of the European Union?” Zach asked.
“Yep,” Clyde said.
“How many people lived here?” Zach said.
“About a quarter of a million, in a country the size of Tasmania,” Clyde said.
“Oh. Wow. Um… how many people live in Tasmania?” Zach asked.
“Half a million,” Clyde said. “Before the outbreak.”
“Oh.”
“There are lakes in Canada bigger than Tasmania,” Avalon said.
“There can’t be,” Zach said.
“I’ve been nominated for the Nobel Prize twice,” Avalon said. “Which of us is more likely to be correct?”
“Didn’t know there was a Nobel for geography,” Zach said.
To which, Tess couldn’t help but laugh.
Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 27