‘Hey Erin, are you ok?’ asked Steph. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost or something.’
‘Nah, I must be overtired. I could have sworn I just saw Jeremy standing at the end of the street,’ a slight tremble in her voice betraying how unnerved she was. ‘But that’s impossible, I mean the guy’s in jail.’
Mark passed a guilty look to his girlfriend. ‘There’s no way he’d hang around, surely the bastard would have run?’
Erin’s gaze flicked between the two adults, her concern rapidly increasing at their expressions. ‘What are you talking about? Who should have run by now?’ she asked.
‘Mark, you’re going to have to tell her, she has a right to know,’ said Steph.
Mark ran a hand through his hair as he cleared his throat. ‘I didn’t want to upset you when the risk was minimal,’ he started.
‘And?’ said Erin. ‘Get to the point.’
‘Jeremy managed to escape the other night,’ he said. ‘But as you live in a street surrounded by soldiers that are itching for an excuse to kill the traitor, we thought you’re safe,’ he said, putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Erin knocked his hand aside. ‘Who are you to make decisions for me? You’re not my fucking father, Mark. You don’t know the bastard like I do. He’s not going to let it rest after I stabbed him. How they hell did he even get out?’
Mark winced. ‘He took advantage of confusion during the dog attack,’ he started, before filling her in about the escape from the medical clinic.
‘You do realise that your ‘street full of soldiers’ is gone tomorrow,’ said Erin scathingly. ‘But that’s fine. I’ve seen to my own safety before, and I’ll bloody well do it again,’ she said, chin jutting out in defiance.
Mark looked like he was starting to lose patience at her tone. ‘I didn’t let the man out, Erin. All I can do is deal with the situation thrown at us, so cut me some slack, ok?’
Erin stepped back, deflating a little. ‘I know. But this wasn’t supposed to happen,’ she said. Steph leaned in, placing an arm around her shoulders in support.
Mark’s face softened again. ‘I’ve talked to Lieutenant Bourke, as it sounded like you trusted him back on King Island. He’s still off active service because of his damaged shoulder, and I thought maybe he could hang out at the house while we’re away,’ he suggested. ‘If you’re not keen on that, I’m open to other ideas.’
Erin nodded mutely. Her hand dropped to her waist, unconsciously seeking to brush past her weapons for reassurance, but came away empty. She’d stopped carrying them a fortnight earlier when she’d finally begun to feel safe again.
Erin stepped away from her friends and headed for the house. ‘I need to get my gun. If he does turn up, the bastard’s going to find I’m not keen on unannounced visitors.’
Chapter thirty-Three
A spare strand of hair broke free of Steph’s ponytail and whipped to the side in the wind. She distractedly tucked it behind an ear, then started chewing on a fingernail. Nate drove the truck at no more than sixty kph, and yet to the squad sitting in the open air of the cage, it felt much faster. Of the twelve soldiers sitting on ammunition crates, most were quiet, lost in their own thoughts as they headed for Geelong.
Mark looked over his crew from where he leaned into the front corner behind the cab, keenly feeling the responsibility for bringing them out the other end of the coming battle alive. In the short time that he’d fought beside the men and women, he’d formed a tough bond, earned through shared dangers and spilt blood. He felt exhausted, stifling a yawn that he knew originated from suppressed stress rather than any true desire to sleep. In a detached sense, he realised that for one of the first times preceding a battle, he felt barely any fear for his own welfare. This brought him little comfort, as he knew it had been usurped by a greater worry that he’d make a tactical error leading to the death of soldiers under his command. With difficulty, he pushed aside these morose thoughts, knowing that to dwell on uncertainties would paralyse his ability to think, guaranteeing a blood bath.
A leather wrapped steel handle poked out above his right shoulder from where Steph had helped him strap in place the scabbard for his Gladius sword. For a while he had left it behind, until the loss of his finger had prompted him to carry it again, a good luck charm that doubled as a brutal killing tool. His men had taken a perverse pride in their officer’s choice of weapon. He hadn’t realised just how much, until Steph had pointed out that nearly every soldier in his platoon now carried some sort of heavy machete, blades sharpened and fashioned into modern day swords of their own. It wasn’t something that he was upset about. Rifles jammed at inopportune moments, and it paid to have a backup that could be trusted to perform when the enemy was close enough to rip the skin from your face.
Looking back, he noted Vinh’s truck had dropped further behind to escape the cloud of grey ash flicked up into the air by his own vehicle. As they neared town, the colours had become dull, muted by a wafer-thin layer of ash over the landscape, a gift from the recent fires. Smoke still rose from a dozen locations in town, lazy white plumes that drifted slowly up into the sky.
Mark jolted backwards into the wire as the truck suddenly started to gear down, dropping speed. Regaining his feet, he looked out the side to see what had prompted the change and felt his jaw slacken. It was one of the bombing sites. To the left of the highway lay a field of black ash. Nothing stood for at least a kilometre where the accelerant had burnt until no fuel remained. Houses were gutted and flattened; even steel had melted in the inferno. No wonder the General had showed little faith in the ability of the fire-fighting helicopters to limit the scale of destruction once the flames were unleashed.
Before them lay a hundred-metre-wide swath of distorted asphalt where the blaze had leapt the road, melting the bitumen in the process. The fire’s path continued toward the bay; burnt out houses telling of its progress. Nate jumped from the cab, testing the surface with the toe of his boot before looking back over his shoulder.
‘Still tacky, but should be ok. You happy to drive over it, Boss?’
‘Don’t see any option,’ said Mark. ‘As long as it’s not hot enough to melt our tyres, we keep on going.’
Nate nodded, climbed back into the cab and stamped on the accelerator. The truck left sunken wheel tracks upon the softened road as they progressed, but came out the other side none the worse for wear.
Until now they’d seen a bare handful of Carriers. The soldiers, surprised at how few they’d found, had picked these off at will. The technique employed appeared to have been incredibly successful. The Navy’s Seahawk helicopter had been used to transport specially made speaker sets to chosen locations about the town. Massive amplifiers powered by a battery unit and housed in a steel mesh cage had been lowered by cable to the ground. Mark and Jai could already attest to the gut wrenching soundtrack played on repeat from their trip to Leopold, and yet again, the Infected had been drawn to the sound like flies to shit, obliging the General by gathering into tight swarms for their subsequent incineration.
‘I didn’t really believe the bombs would be so successful,’ Steph said as a warm breeze whipped up a cloud of ash near the road. ‘Good thing, because in this heat today, the Infected are going to be moving faster than usual.’
A few of the other soldiers shot her a dark glare. ‘Thanks for tempting fate, Steph,’ said one of them, an older woman named Ruth.
‘Oh, whatever,’ said Steph. ‘It’s not like my words are going to change what we face today. It’s true though, about the Carriers being faster. I mean, it feels warm already and it’s only early morning. You’ve seen those bastards when they get hot – they start fucking sprinting. Give me a cold, slow one any day.’
‘None of that matters,’ said Mark, cutting off Ruth before she could further the argument. ‘When they’re less than a metre from the cage, I don’t care if they’re slow or fast – we won’t be missing those shots. If you can pull a trigger, and I know all of y
ou can do a shit load better than just that, you’ll be able to splatter their brains on the pavement. All we have to do is keep our minds on the task, and we’ll be home before evening. Easy.’ His simple words calmed the unit, and both women let the topic drop.
The radio clipped to Mark’s vest crackled into life. ‘It’s time to part ways, Boss. We’ll see you in the centre of town,’ said Vinh from the truck behind.
‘No worries, remember – stay on MacKillop St, then a right into Moorabool. We’ll try and leave a few Carriers for you, wouldn’t want you boys to miss out on all the fun,’ said Mark.
‘OK, call if back-up’s needed.’
‘Likewise, Sergeant.’ Mark re-clipped the radio to his webbing and watched as Vinh’s truck veered off the Bellarine Highway with a vague sense of unease. For better or worse, the General’s plans had just split his men into two groups, just far enough apart to be of little use to each other if the shit truly hit the fan.
Nothing more happened until their truck approached Ryrie St, where the Bellarine highway turned onto the main street of the town centre. Nate pulled to a stop and Jai opened the door on the passenger side of the truck cabin, hanging out to talk to Mark.
‘Enemy sighted ahead. Looks like some of them did survive after all.’
Mark stood on his tiptoes so he could see over the top of the cabin and whistled through his teeth at the sight. ‘Yeah, enough to keep us busy that’s for sure.’ One block ahead the street was crammed with bodies, a writhing flesh wall from one side to the other. The Carriers fought against each other, desperately trying to reach something further down the block. Mark’s truck had so far been completely ignored.
A tortured wail pierced the air, undulating in agony before being smothered. Mark’s head flicked around, trying to see where the sound had come from. It had been unnaturally loud, cutting over the Infected’s snarls of anger with ease. The sound drove the Carriers to new heights of frenzy, climbing over others in their desire to reach the origin of the noise.
‘Surely they wouldn’t have dropped one here,’ muttered Mark to himself.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Steph.
‘Did you hear that scream a moment before? It’s the recording from one of the sound attractants. No wonder there’s so many of them.’ He unclipped his radio and called back to the Fort. ‘I can hear a recording from one of the speaker sets in town. I’ve a got a wall of bloody Infected ripping each other to shreds to reach it, but it makes no sense – what the hell’s it doing there?’
There was unbroken static for a few moments before a voice broke through the background. ‘There were no planned drops for your location. Are you sure that’s what you’re hearing?’
‘I’m not fucking deaf; I know what I heard. What I want to know is why it’s there,’ said Mark, struggling to not lose his temper with the operator.
‘The Seahawk crew noted one lost speaker set, there was an accident with the cable resulting in the cargo falling to the ground. The exact location was not recorded, however the crew assured Command that the speakers would have been destroyed on impact.’
‘Well, if that’s what we’ve found, it seems that the speakers are working just fine. I want reconfirmation that the General wants us to engage, or if he wants to take advantage of their density and drop a MK77 on them and incinerate the lot.’
A gravelly voice replaced the communications clerk on the radio. ‘This is General Black. I want you to proceed as planned. The centre of town will not be bombed.’
Mark was lost for words, stunned at what he was being asked to do.
‘Did you hear my order, Lieutenant? Or am I about to regret giving you the first field commission in decades?’
Mark shook himself out of his stupor. ‘Yes, Sir, we are to proceed and engage the enemy.’
‘Good. Report once you’ve eliminated the swarm. Out.’ The line went dead. In the meantime, Nate had inched the truck further towards the Infected mob. The sound of frenzied Carriers now filled their ears, animalistic aggression smashing their eardrums in a wall of snarling noise.
Mark called through to Vinh and updated him on the Seahawk’s fuck up. ‘We’ve had a direct order to continue despite the swarm. What’s your situation?’
‘The same as you, Sir. We were clear until we turned into Moorabool St, but I think we’ve run up against the other end of your swarm. Time to find out how well these trucks are constructed I guess.’
‘Good luck Sergeant, we’ll see you at the other side. Out.’
Mark turned his focus back to the soldiers standing with him in the cage. Each man and woman was watching, their eyes fixed on his, expressions tense as they waited for him to speak.
‘It’s time to earn our pay. Just concentrate on one target at a time and block out the rest. Remember – we’re safe inside the cage, the only thing that can hurt us in here is friendly fire, so make sure the ends of your barrels are poking outside the wire before you shoot. I don’t want ricochets taking someone out or weakening the cage.’
The tray beneath their feet rumbled as the truck drove closer to the enemy. ‘Take your positions. Let’s send these bastards back to the grave!’
Nate plunged the wedge in front of the cabin deep into the swarm. Those that weren’t pushed to the side disappeared under the truck’s wheels, mashed to a pulp, skulls bursting like rotten watermelons. They finally had the attention of the mob. The Infected surged about the sides of the tray, desperately trying to access the warm, uninfected flesh that was so tantalisingly close.
Nate hit the brakes, bringing the truck to a stop to provide the squad with sure footing as they engaged the Carriers. Snarling faces enclosed the soldiers from all sides, fingers reaching through the wire impotently. The Infected here weren’t new. Skin and tissue on their faces had become desiccated, the lips and gums withdrawn from the teeth as the tissue dried and contracted over time. Their eyes were demonic, the corneas dry and scratched to the point of being opaque and white. Slabs of skin were missing from most, tissue ripped free by unforgiving teeth. Many displayed hideous injuries. Ribs showed clearly on some, white bone stained brown with old blood. Others had abdomens torn, a lung dangling absurdly into the void where its intestines should have been drawing Mark’s gaze. The stench was awful, the smell of an abattoir left to rot.
Steph gagged, then forced herself to swallow the sour bile. She picked out a target and fired, the bullet entering the face of an old man at point blank range, splattering the back of his skull and brain onto the Carriers behind. The corpse dropped from view, replaced immediately by another screaming face. The whole squad now engaged the Infected, the noise of the rifles a constant rippling of fire as shot after shot rang out.
Sweat began to drip down Mark’s face, cutting rivulets through the smoke grime that covered each of them. The morning sun beat down on the truck, heating not only the soldiers, but also the surrounding Carriers, lending them greater speed and dexterity as their body temperatures came closer to that of the living. The Infected climbed over each other and up the sides of the cage. Soon the roof was covered, rotten sludge dripping from their mouths as they screamed in rage and frustration.
The light within the cage dimmed, all but blocked out by the Infected that swarmed over each side. Carriers wrenched at the protecting walls with such ferocity that the wire severed their fingers, falling to the floor like fat white slugs.
Mark wiped a foul-smelling sludge off his face that had dripped from above with disgust. They needed to get the roof clear and find some way to stop the whole truck from being constantly overrun.
‘Focus on the roof. I want those bastards off us!’ he shouted over the din.
Steph and four others climbed up on the ammunition boxes to get closer. Steph shoved the end of her rifle barrel deep into the open mouth of a screaming Carrier and pulled the trigger. The corpse jerked upwards with the passage of the bullet before falling back down on the top of the cage, splattering her face with mushed brain and clotted blood.
She pushed aside her revulsion and picked out her next target, repeating the process again and again.
Mark let his rifle hang from its sling and picked up one of the long broom handles. Pushing one end through a gap in the cage roof, he began levering off the corpses that had been killed. Light filtered through the gaps, letting them see properly again. Finally, the roof was largely free of the dead. Mark thumped on the cabin wall for Nate to move. The truck edged forward and away from the piles of corpses that had surrounded the cage, giving them space to start again.
The next hours blurred into an endless stream of rage filled faces, gore and barely contained terror as the squad systematically culled the Infected outside their cage walls. The recorded screams from the dumped speaker set slowly gained in volume as they made progress down the block. On either side of them now were the remnants of retail stores on either side of the road, where wide solid awnings jutted over the footpath. Behind the truck lay a thick layer of corpses, each with its head smashed apart by high velocity ammunition.
So far, Nate had been able to drive the truck around any blockages on the road, easing between burnt out car wrecks and the detritus of apocalyptic carnage that had befallen the town. But no longer. The street was blocked from side to side by a massive pile-up. Picking the far left as the easiest point to break through, Nate eased the wedge into the side of a half-crushed Corolla, the point pushing into the rear wheel and panel. The car screeched as broken metal was pushed across the tarmac. Suddenly there was a series of sharp cracking noises as half the weld joining the wedge to the truck snapped. The point of the wedge rode upwards, piercing deep into the metal panel like it was no more than parchment, and then onwards into the fuel tank. Suddenly the car exploded in flame as a spark ignited the spilt petrol.
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