Plague War: Outbreak

by Alister Hodge

  ‘We don’t have all the answers to explain what you have just seen. It doesn’t fit any pattern of terrorism as we know it, and the instigators are of multiple nationalities and religious backgrounds. We can’t pin it on any of the groups currently being watched by our intelligence services. Our best bet is it’s some type of infection passed from attacker to victim through body fluid exchange during a bite, as there are witness accounts of victims taking on the behaviour patterns of their assailants.’

  ‘That guy in the video got shot at least five times without going down, how is that possible?’ asked one the constables.

  The Superintendent shrugged and sighed. ‘The best answer given to us, is that the infection has switched off brain recognition of the body’s usual pain response system, so they’re just not feeling physical trauma any more. My guess is that the heart was missed, and our video didn’t go on long enough to show him collapsing from blood loss. Further studies are being completed at the Federal Quarantine facility on an infected person taken from Randwick hospital yesterday.’ The superintendent’s hands gripped the rostrum tight, white knuckles at odds with an otherwise calm facade. ‘They’re updating security forces as more information comes to hand about what precautions are needed to prevent infection transmission to our people. We’re still left with the immediate need to contain this violence. There have been outbreaks in at least six locations around Sydney within the last few hours, the closest to us is in Newtown, and we’ll be sending half of you there to assist.’ His gaze roamed the room, briefly making eye contact with many of the officers. ‘The rest are to remain in our area, ready to confront any local occurrences. Our focus is on containment and restraint of the infected if possible, however, your safety remains paramount – if required, escalate the level of force appropriately. All officers sent to Newtown will be armed in riot gear.’

  As soon as he stopped speaking, at least four people asked questions from the audience. The Superintendent cut them off. ‘I’d like to spend more time answering questions, however, time is short and we have to move now.’ He pointed to the back of the room where A4 sheets of paper were being pinned to a notice board. ‘You’ll find your deployment details there. Officers allocated to Newtown, you’ll be leaving in thirty minutes.’

  He gathered a few pieces of paper off the rostrum, and departed for the central command room where overall coordination of the operation would occur.

  ‘Absolute bullshit,’ muttered an officer to her left.

  Penny glanced to her side at a younger cop, a bloke called Dino who was fond spouting conspiracy theories. She sighed, not having the energy to put up with his shit.

  ‘What, the deployment strategy?’ she asked in a disinterested voice, wanting to avoid the conversation.

  ‘No, the Superintendent’s rationale. We just saw a guy get shot five times in the chest, and he says it’s because the heart was missed? With that many hitting home, even if the heart was missed; his lungs, arteries or something would have been taken out – that’s why we’re taught to aim for centre-of-mass for gods sake!’

  ‘Get to your point, Dino,’ said Penny, keen to get moving.

  ‘I’m saying, that the reason that monster didn’t go down, was because he didn’t get shot in the head.’

  Penny groaned, finally losing all patience. ‘For fucks sake, this isn’t an episode of “The Walking Dead”. Those people out there might be diseased or mentally deranged, but that doesn’t make them bloody zombies.’

  Dino smarted at her tone, looking like she’d just slapped him in the face. ‘OK, when one of those freaks attack you, keep on shooting centre of mass and see how long you last. But as for me? I’ll be aiming for the head. Ain’t no freaking zombie having me for lunch.’

  Penny turned away, cutting off the conversation and joined the crowd closing in on the deployment notices, hoping that she was in the group staying in Kogarah. No such luck. There she was ‒ Penny O’Brien, under the Newtown list.

  She squeezed down on the ball on anxiety that wanted to rise and break free of her chest, and instead forced herself to think of what had to be done before leaving. Pulling out her mobile, she dialled her husband David and gave him an update, an update that deliberately excluded anything that would worry him unduly – therefore, pretty much everything.

  Chapter Seven

  The setting sun cast shards of light through a gap in the curtain, slicing across Mark’s face like knives. He was lying on the couch under the front window of his Glebe terrace, asleep. Or, more accurately, passed out after drinking himself into oblivion the previous night.

  He’d only returned the day before from a stint in Afghanistan as a sapper with the Australian Army, and instead of being met by his girlfriend for a long-anticipated reunion night of drinking and shagging, he’d been dumped by text message. At least she’d waited until he got back to give him the news, though it didn’t make it any easier on reading.

  She hadn’t given a clear reason, just said she wanted other things – what the fuck was that supposed to mean? Mark had coped with the news in typical army fashion, by getting so drunk that he couldn’t remember his own name, let alone hers. He’d bought a slab of Victoria Bitter and bottle of vodka and headed home, parked his arse on the couch in front of Netflix, and began to work his way through the case of beer. He then made a decent effort of the vodka before slumping unconscious.

  The first thing that registered was pain; his whole head ached, a vice-like pressure clenched his temples, the pain fluctuating its intensity with each heartbeat. As he opened his eyes, the light on his face lanced a burning poker of agony through to the back of his skull.

  Mark groaned and raised his hand to shade his eyes, silently cursing before pushing himself to sitting. He sat there for a few moments, bent forward, breathing deeply and rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands as if they could crush the pain out of his head. His mouth was dry, and tasted like some bastard cat had shat in it. He climbed to his feet and stumbled into the kitchen; his stomach churned and spit flooded his mouth as his gorge rose. He made it to the sink in time to empty last night’s pizza out of his stomach. The sweet waft of vomit made him gag again, retching until nothing more would come.

  He wiped a slick of cold sweat from his forehead, and tried to spit the taste from his mouth before pulling a bottle of coke from the fridge, swilling the carbonated bubbles around his mouth and spitting once more. With the next mouthful, he washed down a couple of Panadol and Nurofen, then waited next to the sink to see if it would come straight back up again. His stomach gurgled angrily, but kept its contents within for the moment.

  Mark made himself a black coffee, extra strong, before sitting at the kitchen table, his forehead resting on folded arms while the cup cooled enough to drink. He sat like this for a good while, trying to ignore his headache and self-pity that had prompted the binge, and waited for the tablets to take the edge off his pain.

  His terrace was an old two-storey building he had managed to buy with a mix of inheritance and money saved from multiple tours of Afghanistan over the past five years. Unfortunately, the cash had only been enough to secure the building and service the loan, not enough to begin renovation, of which it was desperately in need. Stuck in the orange and browns of the 1970s, it was small, but it was his. The severity of his headache began to recede as the painkillers took effect, the vice grip on his temples lessened and he could open his eyes without wincing. His house was quiet, the TV silent, and there was no sound other than an occasional screaming bird in the distance. It was this absence of sound that drew Mark’s attention; usually there was a constant fluctuation of noise and vibration from traffic outside his terrace.

  He rotated his head to listen. There it was again. But it didn’t sound like a bird now that he was concentrating, it sounded like human screams. What the fuck?

  Mark got up from the table and padded barefoot to his front door. He stepped outside onto the damp stone of his front step. An involuntary shiver
worked through his upper body at the cold breeze swirling about the street, his old jeans and faded singlet providing little protection from the cold. It was early June, and the evening temperatures were steadily dropping as winter took hold.

  He craned his neck, looking up his street towards the intersection with Glebe Point Rd. There was a fire somewhere nearby; grey smoke-smeared eddies swirled in the distance, the smell acrid to his nose. A few figures staggered through the smoke, grabbing at other running people that occasionally flitted between them down the main street. Something’s wrong.

  Mark closed the door behind him then turned on the television in the living room, flicking to the ABC News channel. Two news anchors sat behind their desk, strained expressions accompanying a looping discussion of the violence hitting Sydney streets. Mark sat, attention rapt to the screen, incredulous at the situation described by the reporters.

  Multiple outbreaks of general disorder throughout the city, civilians turning on each other with mindless violence. The government had declared a state of emergency and citizens were encouraged to stay at home while police and defence personnel brought the situation under control. The violent behaviour of individuals was thought to have resulted from a mutated virus.

  An infected Australian woman travelling from North Queensland had attacked staff at a Sydney Emergency Department, killing one and biting others. Although police transferred the infected person to a Federal quarantine facility, the virus escaped into the general community via bitten staff members released home on the night of the attack. The subject under investigation at the quarantine facility had tested positive for a new variant of Lyssavirus – a disease closely related to Rabies, found in Australian bat populations. Security forces theorised that the woman was bitten or scratched by a bat in North Queensland, however, had not ruled out the possibility of biological terrorism, and a deliberate release of the modified virus into the community.

  The footage cut to an infectious diseases expert to explain virus transmission. The doctor looked exhausted, his clothes a creased mess of someone who had slept fully dressed.

  ‘The new virus had been named “Lysan Plague” due to its rapid spread through the community to date. Lysan, like its predecessor Lyssavirus, is a vector borne disease, although unlike malaria or dengue fever where the disease is transmitted by the humble mosquito, the vector in this case is our own species.’ The doctor paused, listening to questions off screen.

  ‘What’s a vector? Ah, ok… I’ll try to speak in plain terms. Well, a vector is any creature, whether human, animal or insect, that carries and transmits an infection into another organism. The virus is transmitted from the host during a bite, where saliva is inoculated into the victim’s wound. The infection rate is one hundred percent, with the speed of conversion varying dependent on the injury site. Patients with superficial wounds take some hours to deteriorate, displaying symptoms of rampant infection before deteriorating to a point of apparent death. In patients with trauma to larger blood vessels, the process occurs more rapidly, sometimes in as little as thirty minutes. Post “death”, observed subjects become active once more; however, normal cognitive processes are absent, replaced with a senseless urge to pass on the virus through biting. Thankfully, we have not observed any airborne transmission of the virus to date. What we don’t understand so far, is why carriers of the disease in many cases continue to eat their victims...’

  The report cut back to the studio once again, where a police representative reported that two other outbreaks in Cairns and Brisbane were also active. He sought to reassure viewers that police were implementing a strategy across Sydney to contain the areas of violence and infected citizens, and advised people to remain indoors, lock windows and doors, keep lights off and remain quiet as carriers of the infection sought out noise and human activity.

  In the advent of an attack upon a friend or family member, the police representative urged viewers to lock the person in a secure room by themselves, and to notify the police and Public Health for retrieval, as Public Health was still hopeful they could identify a cure for the infection. Lastly, he advised against fleeing Sydney to prevent road blockages and further chances of infection transmission in public.

  Mark rocked back in his chair and looked up at the peeling paint on his ceiling. Surely it had to be a large-scale prank, like the ones the BBC did each year on April the 1st? The ongoing screams in the distance, accompanied now by intermittent sirens said otherwise.

  He secured the curtains properly, locked the front door, turned the lights off and muted the television. Mark knew he couldn’t stay in the house; for one thing, he had no food, and he would likely be recalled to the army base at Randwick.

  Shit. His phone had been off since last night. Not wanting anyone to disturb his drinking session; he’d turned off his mobile and left it in his bag upstairs. He took the steps two at a time, grabbed his backpack off the bed and rummaged in the front pocket for the phone. After taking a bloody age to start, his iPhone alerted the presence of a bunch of messages. First was the duty officer at Randwick, demanding an immediate return to service at seven this morning; a variation of this message was present at roughly forty-five minute intervals through the rest of the morning. More alarming however, were the five messages from his now ex-girlfriend, Georgie, who was living on campus at Sydney University. She sounded terrified.

  He immediately called her. On the third ring, she picked up.

  ‘Mark, is that you? Are you all right?’ she asked rapidly, her voice cracking.

  ‘Yeah, I’m ok. I’ve just woken up, got your message and seen what’s happening on the news – is this for real?’

  ‘I bloody wish it wasn’t.’

  ‘What, have you seen something yourself?’

  ‘I was in Newtown for lunch. I saw the start of it. I saw them overrun the cops,’ she said, her voice trembling.

  ‘Saw what overrun the cops? You mean virus infected people that the news is talking about?’

  ‘They don’t just look sick, Mark. They look like walking corpses; it was too surreal to be happening. Lucy and I were at the cafe there when we saw the police vans scream in and deploy a riot line across King Street. We thought it must have been an exercise or something, so we walked out onto the street to watch. Damn, I wish we’d just run then...’ she said, her voice trailing off.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘The police were attacked, and before you knew it they were in retreat back down King St. And then they came after us.’

  ‘Georgie?’

  ‘Mark, there was hundreds of them. Most followed the cops, but a lot came our way. We ran a block towards RPA Hospital, that’s where most of the people in the cafe went to, thinking we might be safe there. Fucking stupid, I mean what good are a few hospital security guards going to be when a line of armed cops didn’t hold them.’

  ‘Did they follow you to the hospital?’

  ‘Yeah, they came right after us. Broke down the doors into the main entrance within minutes. We just kept going, deeper into the hospital, and escaped out one of the rear buildings into the University grounds. It’s the patients I feel sorry for, the “Infected” – is that what you called them?’

  ‘That’s what the news report named them.’

  ‘Well, they left us well alone when they found easier targets. All those poor bastards stuck in beds, unable to escape. They were eaten alive, I mean that literally, Mark. I don’t think I’ll ever get their screams out of my head.’ Georgie’s voice was trembling as she tried to hold it together.

  ‘Where are you now?’ Mark asked. ‘I’ll come and get you, take you to the army base with me at Randwick, it’ll probably be the safest place to go.’

  ‘I’m in one of the Science buildings, but we can’t stay here. Everyone seems to be heading to the old Quadrangle. People think we’ll be able to barricade it and keep them outside. Can you make it there?’

  ‘Ok, I’ll be there as soon as I can, at the northern entrance. Keep
an eye out for me if you can and phone at hand, yeah?’

  He hung up, and started grabbing his stuff together. He’d yet to unpack after returning from overseas, so it made the job easier. A large duffle bag filled with army uniforms and civilian clothes went over his left shoulder, a webbing belt over his right. He got to the front door before pausing. He dumped his stuff on the ground and ran back upstairs to the spare room. He might not need it, but it would make him feel better having a weapon close at hand, even if it just got left in his Ute. Mark entered the digital code to the safe, swung open the door and pulled out his rifle, a Sako .22 bolt action, and four boxes of bullets to service it. With rifle slung over shoulder, he returned downstairs, picked up the duffle bag and webbing and headed outside.

  A brief glance up and down the street showed no one nearby, however, a man was at the end of his street, stumbling in his direction. Mark jogged across the road to where his ute was parked, a twin cab Ford Ranger. He threw his bag and webbing in the back seats, placed the rifle carefully on top then climbed in the driver’s side behind the wheel.

  The figure thirty metres up the street was coming his way now, angling off the path towards the ute with an odd shambling gait. Something about the man, made Mark want to avoid any interaction if possible. He slid the key into the ignition, and revved the engine to life. Mark turned the wheel and pulled out, accelerating rapidly to get past the approaching man. He failed.

  The man walked straight onto the street, his eyes locked upon Mark in the Ute. Mark tried to swerve away from him, but ran out of space against the parked cars to the left. His side mirror hit one of them and snapped off with a violent crack, then the man lunged into his vehicle’s path. The high front of the Ranger knocked him onto his back and the front wheel bounced over the body’s hips. Mark hit the brakes and the body became stuck under his back wheel as the ute skidded to a stop.