Plague War: Pandemic

by Alister Hodge

  ‘Stop there.’

  Harry pulled up abruptly at the command, noticing for the first time a security panel on the wall made up of a speaker, camera and keypad.

  ‘Show your ID card and state name and purpose,’ said a disinterested voice.

  Harry fished his army ID card from his pocket and held it up for the small camera and announced his details.

  There was a pause of a few seconds, ‘You’re late.’

  Harry looked at the speaker incredulously as a buzzer sounded and an electric lock opened, allowing the door to swing back.

  ‘I’d be less bloody late if you’d just let me in,’ said Harry under his breath as he walked into a deserted reception area. Whitewashed walls dirtied by three-decade’s worth of scuffs and marks reared over a scratched linoleum floor. After a few moments, a distracted looking man emerged from a room to the right. Wire rimmed glasses perched on a thin nose. His shirt was crumpled, like a man who made a habit of sleeping in his clothes.

  ‘Harry is it?’ he asked. Not waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and said over his shoulder, ‘Come with me, we’ve got work to do.’

  Harry bit his tongue as he followed, not wanting to get off on the wrong foot with his new colleague. On entering the room, Harry felt his jaw slacken in surprise at the sheer weight of technology on the premises. Consciously, he closed his mouth to avoid looking like an imbecile.

  ‘We’re primarily a testing site for vaccines developed in Sydney,’ said the man as he stood at a high bench, filling tiny test tubes from a pipette of blood. He picked up the completed rack of tubes and gently placed them in a centrifuge before setting the machine into action. ‘OK, while that’s on, let’s knock over a quick tour of the place. My name’s Doug,’ he said, extending a limp hand to shake.

  Harry accepted the weak gesture as he continued to take in the different machines about the room. Some he recognised from the university laboratory, but that had been nearly a decade ago and most of the technology from that time had been superseded.

  ‘You’re a doctor I hear,’ Doug said, a slight sneer of contempt lifting the corner of his mouth. ‘My parents wanted me to go into medicine when I was in high school, but I chose science instead. Why aren’t you off saving lives, or whatever it is that doctors do?’

  ‘I’m taking a secondment for a while. Not much I can do for people once they’re bitten at the moment,’ said Harry, determined to ignore Doug’s condescending tone.

  ‘Have you got any sort of experience? We aren’t cooking up chocolate brownies, you know. This is hard-core stuff. The fate of Australia and the rest of the world rests on the shoulders of scientists like me.’

  Harry struggled not to openly laugh. ‘Ah, yeah. I know one end of a microscope from the other if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘No, it’s not. You’re no use to me if you’re only here to take up space, maybe you should head back up to the meatheads at the Fort,’ said Doug turning away from him as if dismissed.

  Harry finally lost patience. ‘Before going into medicine, I completed a science degree with first class honours. So, to answer your question; yes, I know enough to help run the research program here, but that doesn’t involve putting up with self-important bullshit from you. How about you finish showing me around, so I can get to work?’

  Doug backed away from him as if he’d been physically attacked, and Harry took some satisfaction from the astonished look on his colleague’s face.

  ‘F-f-fine,’ stuttered Doug, straightening his shirt and looking anywhere but at Harry. ‘Since you obviously know everything about the equipment in here from your Science Degree, we’ll move right along,’ he said, recovering his haughty attitude rapidly. ‘Follow me, I’ll show you to where the test subjects are kept.’

  Doug swept out of the room without a backward glance. Harry clenched his jaw in annoyance as he trailed after the man. Just his luck to score a douche for a work mate.

  The noise of agitated barking grew in volume as the two men approached the rear of the building. Next to the back door was a single green button that Doug punched with a fingertip, unlocking the latch. He shouldered the door aside and stepped through into a wide shallow room. On the far side of the space was a series of long narrow enclosures, each holding a single dog. The barking escalated to greater ferocity as the canines sighted the men, jumping against the front of their cages with saliva frothing at their jaws. Each of the dogs was large. Harry spotted a few Rottweilers and Alsatians, however, the vast majority looked like crossbreeds with a heavy dose of mastiff in their heritage.

  ‘Couldn’t you find a few Foxies or Chihuahuas to test?’ Harry said, eyeing the sizeable teeth of the Rottweiler opposite.

  ‘Not many dogs that size left, unfortunately,’ answered Doug. ‘With no owners left to feed them, pets had to hunt to survive. Most little dogs just became a bigger one’s lunch. Hence why the canines we’ve managed to catch have tended to be on the large size. They’re the survivors of shit circumstances, and therefore the biggest and meanest by default. I would have preferred primates for the vaccine trials, but a great scientist can make do I suppose.’

  ‘What’s with all the excessive salivation? They look bloody rabid.’

  Doug gave him a withering look. ‘This is a research site, you know, for the Lysan Plague? They’ve all been infected with the virus. In dogs it just works a little different to humans. It doesn’t kill them; but it does send them mad,’ he said, flinching as an Alsatian launched at its cage front, teeth snapping.

  ‘That wire mesh along their pens seems a little fragile, don’t you think?’ said Harry.

  ‘It was strong enough to hold the pound dogs for the last twenty years, I’m sure it’ll be fine for us,’ Doug said, picking up a rifle and loading it with a dart. ‘I need a sample from subject three,’ he said, walking over to stand in front of a huge male Doberman. ‘I injected him with a new version of vaccine yesterday. Let’s see how it’s performing, shall we?’

  Doug raised the rifle and shot a dart into the dog’s chest. The sedative worked fast, and within minutes, the animal collapsed. Doug picked up a long wooden broom handle and poked the dog through the wire of the cage. Nothing.

  ‘Looks like it should be safe enough,’ he said, a touch of nervousness entering his demeanour as he walked over to a control panel. A sequence of buttons, each labelled with a corresponding cage number was on the panel.

  ‘Now I shouldn’t need to warn you, but double check which cage you want to open before touching this panel. If you hit the wrong number, you’ll let loose a rabid beast. A single bite from one of these bastards means your death – they may not be dead, but they’ll transfer the virus to you just the same.’

  Harry nodded, thinking that maybe it would have been safer to install the control panel in a different room to prevent such accidents. Doug activated the release for the Doberman’s cage, causing the door to spring open. The dog was still unconscious, tongue lolling from the corner of its mouth. With a practiced hand, he located a vein on the animal’s neck, and pierced it with a needle. Dark blood filled the syringe as he drew back on the plunger. Sample gained, Doug withdrew and locked the cage front again.

  ‘And that’s how it’s done!’ he said, holding up the syringe of blood like a prize trophy. A movement from behind Doug drew Harry’s attention. The dog had just lurched upward onto unsteady limbs, lips already pulled back in a snarl despite its eyes being barely open.

  ‘Jesus, you cut that fine!’ said Harry. ‘What if it had taken you a few minutes to find a vein?’

  Doug’s face had lost all colour at the animal’s premature recovery. ‘It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘That dose should have laid him out unconscious for an hour or more.’

  ‘Time to shoot them with a bigger dart from here on in then?’ said Harry. Doug nodded in mute agreement.

  ‘Anyway, we’ve got the blood this time at least. Shall we crack on and get the test started?’ Harry said.

  ‘O
f course, times a-wasting,’ said Doug distractedly, his hand holding the blood sample displaying a coarse tremor. ‘Oh, there’s one last thing. See that break glass fire alarm?’

  Harry followed Doug’s pointing finger and identified a red alarm button on the wall next to the room’s entrance.

  ‘If you press that we’re all dead. It’s a relic from when the facility was still a pound. Some bleeding heart put in a control that opens all doors in the building along with the dog cages in the case of fire so that the animals wouldn’t burn alive. I’ve been hassling to get it removed since we moved in, but I’m still waiting. So, if this place catches on fire – make a phone call or get a bucket yourself. Just don’t press that button. I’d rather this place burn to the ground than let those beasts out.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘My dad used to want one of these so badly,’ Jai said, dumping an armful of equipment in the back of the 4WD. ‘Who would have thought six months ago, that all you had to do was live a little longer, and you’d get to pick any car off the street?’

  He closed the door and stood back to look at the Land Rover Defender that Mark had acquired for their mission. It was in good condition with five doors, a matt black paint job, and equipment cage on the roof accessible by a step ladder running up the back of the car.

  Mark only grunted in reply, barely following Jai’s words as he ran through a last check of his own gear. The monetary value of a car had become irrelevant, the only thing that mattered now was whether or not the vehicle could do the job at hand.

  ‘Everyone ready?’ he asked, looking up at his two-man crew. Jai and Vinh gave a brief thumbs up. ‘Right, let’s get this over and done with.’

  ‘Vinh, you can do the honours, mate,’ Mark said, throwing him the car keys as he walked around to the passenger seat and climbed in. Jai swung open the door at the back of the 4WD and sat on one of the small bench seats that folded down from the sidewalls. If there were Carriers at the extraction site, the car would be reversed up to the door and refugees loaded straight into the back to minimise danger.

  Vinh twisted the key in the ignition and brought the car to life, the engine launching a deep throated purr despite months of inactivity. He’d spent the previous afternoon servicing the vehicle until he was confident it was in peak condition, as a breakdown in plague-infested areas represented a virtual death sentence these days.

  Within minutes they approached the barrier separating Queenscliff’s little peninsula from the rest of the mainland. The army had built a fence across the neck of land where it narrowed to a width of little more than 250 metres. Troops had sunk timber posts deep into the sand, running lines of barbed wire run between them up to shoulder height. The defensive structure was now patrolled twenty-four hours a day, and Mark’s platoon had found themselves frequently assigned to that very duty. The simple barrier had proved effective in stopping Carriers from entering as they invariably got snagged on the wire and trapped. This made killing them relatively easy for the patrols but disengaging the corpses from the wicked steel barbs was a different matter, tearing deep rents in many a soldier’s skin.

  Vinh geared down as they neared the barrier, slowing to a crawl. The rest of their platoon was on the fence line for yet another stretch of sentry duty. At their approach, Nate unlocked the padlock holding a tall gate closed across the tarmac and swung it open.

  Vinh pulled up as Mark lowered his window to speak. ‘How many teams have gone through so far?’

  ‘At least fifteen. They were all off to Ocean Grove and Torquay, so you’re the only one headed close to the drop zone,’ said Nate, one hand resting on the windowsill of the car. ‘Steph’s been on edge since she realised where you guys were going this morning. She took off on a patrol with some of the others five minutes ago; probably just pissed that you didn’t invite her along for the fun.’

  Mark ignored the veiled reference to his relationship. When it came to work – he had to make sure it was a non-event. ‘We’ll be back soon enough, plenty of time left to make it in and out. See you in a couple of hours, yeah?’ said Mark.

  ‘No worries, Boss,’ said Nate, stepping back from the car and snapping out a stiff salute. Mark winced at the mark of respect. He still couldn’t get used to other soldiers saluting him and he self-consciously returned it as Vinh hit the accelerator, driving them into plague territory.

  The road ran ahead, empty of movement under a blue sky. Despite the danger awaiting them, Mark couldn’t help but feel his mood lift as Vinh pushed the 4WD toward 100kph. He’d always loved a road trip with mates, eating up the highway with a window down and music blaring. If he didn’t have an Austeyr rifle sitting on his lap instead of a beer, he could have almost fooled himself for a few minutes.

  The communications team in the Fort had made radio contact with numerous survivors within driving distance over the past month. Up until now, those that were secure behind their own defences had been left alone until extraction posed less risk to all involved. However, a slow ramp up to the inevitable attack on Geelong had necessitated the retrieval of survivors in danger from the army’s next explosive move. The numbers of Infected walking the streets of the various small towns in the area needed to be culled before the General would countenance risking any more of his soldiers. Shrapnel producing bombs were largely ineffective, with only small percentages of Carriers suffering direct brain trauma to kill them for a second time. Incendiary devices were a whole other matter. Set the bastards on fire and they all eventually burnt to dust. Unfortunately, the military had been told to minimise damage to infrastructure within each town, and a fire raging out of control didn’t meet that brief. As such, work had begun to lure crowds of the Infected into areas of open pasture where there was less chance of fire spreading to houses.

  Leopold was a suburb on the Bellarine peninsula where one such mass immolation was planned. A scout team had left in the small hours of the morning to set up a speaker attractant at the northern end of the suburb, seeking to draw all Carriers in the open to the one location. It was also why Mark had left his trip to the last minute; the longer he waited, the more likely that he’d find empty streets that he could speed through unimpeded, make the pick-up and bolt for home before the air force dropped the first bomb.

  Mark tried to block from his imagination what would happen if he got delayed for any reason. He’d seen a MK77 bomb dropped on a stubborn Taliban mountain stronghold in Afghanistan, and it had chilled him to his core. On detonation, fire had exploded a hundred feet in the air before rolling down the slopes like a flood, engulfing everything in searing heat until there was nothing left. He could think of many ways that he didn’t want to die, and it still sat up there in his top five. He cracked a private smile at the thought. That he’d seen enough gruesome deaths to form a personal list of which particular ones he didn’t want to experience was probably not a healthy thing, and that being burnt alive didn’t even make his top three was… not worth thinking about. He was still alive, and that was reason enough for him to feel fortunate compared to the crowds of brain dead scum that now wandered the country.

  ‘I hear this guy we’re picking up is some survivalist freak,’ said Jai from the back of the 4WD. ‘High walls, ammunition store and military rifles or something. Don’t see how the guy didn’t get done for being a potential terrorist before all this shit happened. I bet the douche creamed himself when the dead rose up and gave his paranoia grounding.’

  ‘And here I was thinking conspiracy theory crackpots were just an American specialty,’ said Vinh.

  ‘He’ll only be our problem for an hour or so. Whatever weaponry he owns is being left behind. I got told at the briefing that he was pissed off at being extracted. Reckoned he had everything he needed right there and initially told the radio operator to take his offer and fuck off,’ Mark said.

  Jai emitted a short bark of laughter. ‘I bet his opinion changed pretty quickly when he heard a bomb was about to drop on his doorstep.’

 
‘Fuck, here we go,’ muttered Vinh.

  Up ahead, Leopold had pulled into view. Mundane blocks of suburbia appeared on either side of the highway. Carriers were on the move, ignoring their car as they stumbled in a southerly direction. A gut roiling scream built in volume the closer they came to town. Mark rolled his window part way down to hear it better. Although Carriers would eventually move toward any large noise to investigate, nothing had proved more effective at pulling a swarm than the noise of a human in agony. A soundtrack of torture was playing at massive volume, undulating screams filling the air over the entire suburb.

  ‘That noise is definitely coming from the south,’ said Mark as he closed the window again, wincing at the hideous noise. ‘The scout’s fucked up bad. They were supposed to leave the speaker at the other end of town.’

  ‘What’s the big deal?’ said Vinh, shrugging.

  ‘Means we’ll be that much closer to the drop site for the bomb. Here’s hoping most of the Infected have already made their way to the bait,’ said Mark.

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Boss. If there’s anything less than a swarm, we’ll drive straight over them in this car anyway.’

  ‘How much time have we got before the bomb goes off?’ asked Jai.

  Mark glanced down at his wristwatch. ‘We’ll be right. There’s still a thirty-minute window to get in and out again.’ He pulled a digital timer from his shirt pocket and tossed it back to Jai. ‘Set it to twenty minutes and keep an eye on it for me. We need to be on our way by the time that goes off or we won’t have enough distance between us and the bomb.’

  ‘They’re not going to detonate it while we’re in the vicinity,’ said Vinh. ‘What’s five minutes’ difference going to make?’

  ‘Probably nothing, but seeing as it’s not my finger on the switch, I’m not willing to risk them holding off. Life’s become a little cheaper of late, I don’t think too many people would lose sleep over three more deaths,’ Mark said.