“Aaron says they’re in the radio silence spot. Too close to New England.”
“Well, if anything’s gone wrong, we’ll know by tomorrow. Thank you, Matt.”
I went off to rejoin the card games with the others, giving the sergeant one last glance. Just standing there, staring out at the city, thinking about things. I know he’s from Queensland, but I don’t think he ever mentioned being from Brisbane in particular. Maybe he had family here. Not that I’d ever ask. You learn not to ask.
August 2
We weren’t exactly sure what time the HMAS Canberra would arrive in the bay, and Sergeant Blake didn’t feel like waiting around. So he roused us from our beds at the crack of dawn – or rather, from the pieces of old sacking we were using as beds – and hustled us out onto the runway, where Flying Officer Kemeny was waiting with a baggage cart to ferry us out to the edge of the airport. It was cold – I guess the temperature still drops here overnight – and I’d barely slept and I needed to take a shit. “Can’t they just radio us when they get here?” I complained.
“Radio silence, Matt,” Blake said as the baggage cart bounced and bumped its way across the tarmac. “Remember? The entire reason we’re here?”
“I thought that was just long range stuff,” I said. Although I don’t really have the faintest idea of how radio communications work. Professor Llewellyn and Corporal Rahvi had both tried to explain it to me on separate occasions, but it wouldn’t stick in my head.
Brisbane Airport is built right at the southern edge of Moreton Bay, partly on reclaimed land, and Kemeny drove us all the way along the main runway, down another one, all the way to the far northern edge. A chainlink fence was all that separated us from a strip of grass, a seawall and the waters of Moreton Bay. The smell of salt on the air was something I hadn’t realised I’d missed.
There was a security gate by a pumping station, and Kemeny unlocked it and let us out. “Keep your eyes peeled,” he said. “We’ve never seen any zombies on the north side. But you never know.”
It was a slightly thrilling feeling, to be on the outside of the fence. I wondered what might happen if catastrophe struck – if the Canberra never showed up, if something happened to the others and to the airport. What it would feel like to be stuck out here, at the edge of a huge dead city, all on my own.
But as we made our way down the rickety pier next to the pumping station, one thing was clear: the Canberra had already arrived. Corporal Rahvi pointed it out, a distant blob on the northern horizon, moving slowly past the northern edge of the bay.
“She won’t be able to get into the bay itself,” Blake said, peering through his binoculars. “The Lincoln’s blocked it. Might have to wait a bit while she makes anchor.”
“What’s with all the other ships?” I asked. There was a long, loose column of them inside the bay, leading up to the resting place of the aircraft carrier. Everything from oil tankers to pleasure yachts, some of them half-sunk across the bay’s sandbars, others still riding at anchor.
“They were trying to get away,” Dresner figured. “But the Lincoln sank and blocked the channel, so they were stuck.”
“That sucks,” I said. “Wonder if there’s anyone still alive on them?”
“None that we’ve seen,” Kemeny said. “Not a lot of survivors around here at all, that we’ve come across.”
“What about the Lincoln?” I said. “All the US Navy guys. There must have been some people who survived, they couldn’t have all gone down with the ship.”
“If so, they didn’t stick around.”
I guess I wouldn’t either. But it was an odd thought: US Navy survivors flung upon this foreign shore, natives of Ohio or Alaska or Texas, suddenly forced to flee into the Gold Coast hinterland, or off into the Outback, or even up towards the jungle in Cape York. There might have been hundreds of them. There might still be, even now, scattered and lost and falling in with other groups of survivors.
We sat around on the pier for several hours, taking turns at keeping watch. There was only a narrow strip of grass between the seawall and the airport fence, running for hundreds of metres in both directions, so we’d have plenty of notice if a zombie came edging along. Theoretically one could come up out of the bay, as well, but it would probably struggle getting up the seawall. (“You reckon there’s dead down there?” Lomax asked Kemeny. “Fucking oath,” was his reply.)
It was midmorning by the time the Canberra sent a boat out to fetch us – a jet-black rigid inflatable boat, with a sailor at the tiller and two more sitting further up holding rifles. “That looks like a long bloody trip,” I said. “Why didn’t they just send a chopper?”
“Fuel,” Blake said simply.
“Plus we probably lost our chopper privileges after what happened to the last one,” Rahvi said drily.
The RIB pulled up to the pier and tossed a rope out; Blake didn’t bother to tie it up but merely held it steady as we threw our bags down into the boat. “Sergeant Blake,” one of the riflemen called up. “Good to see you again.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, sir,” Blake called down. “You’ll remember Corporal Rahvi – privates, Matt, Flying Officer, this is Petty Officer Mack. Officer – privates Lomax, Dresner, Rickenbacker. Flying Officer Kemeny, CO here at the airport. And our civilian colleague, Matthew King.”
“The telepath, right?” Mack said.
Blake stared at him. “Jesus Christ. Don’t tell me Norton told the whole crew.”
“Just some of the officers,” Mack said. “But it sort of leaked out.”
“He shouldn’t have even told them!”
“You’ve got five soldiers and a teenage civilian being flown up from Wagga and brought out to the ship,” Mack said. “What the hell was he supposed to do?”
“He could have used his imagination,” Blake muttered. “Well. Come on, then.”
We said goodbye to Kemeny – who was keeping a pretty good poker face over the telepath comment, but was certainly looking at me differently – and began cutting back north across the bay. The sun was well overhead now, another day above twenty degrees, and I have to say that with the sunlight on my skin and the wind in my hair and the smell of an ocean breeze, I felt pretty goddamn optimistic.
We passed by the sad, ragged column of trapped boats – a half-sunk container ship the size of the Regina Maersk, an LPG tanker still thankfully floating secure, some kind of massive fishing trawler – and soon we were motoring over more open water, a flock of seagulls screeching overhead, the urban smudge of the city off to our left and the green flanks of the island off to our right. The island was more interesting: thick tropical bushland, sand dunes, hills, the occasional abandoned ferry terminal or restaurant complex. Not a lick of movement.
As we went on I could see more clearly the reassuring bulk of the HMAS Canberra, moored just to the north of the shipping channel, at the very edge of the bay. I started peering down into the water, past the regular spray from the bow, trying to see if I could make out anything of the USS Abraham Lincoln. The tide must have been up from yesterday because no parts of the superstructure were visible above water any more. In fact we seemed to be above quite a deep part of the bay, which would make sense, the only part deep enough to swallow an aircraft carrier whole – if only just. But we seemed to be moving towards a shallower part again. There was an underwater cliff ahead of us, maybe the edge of the shipping channel, rising quite sharply up through the water and levelling off so that the bed of the bay was only a metre or two below the surface…
I blinked. I looked again. The cliff had straight lines and markings on it. The cliff had “CVN-72” stencilled on it.
It wasn’t a cliff. It was the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, lying on its side in eighty metres of seawater.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed.
Then we were over it, and almost at the Canberra. Suddenly the pleasant subtropical morning didn’t seem quite so innocent. Suddenly I was aware of the enormous bulk sitting just benea
th us, of all those unseen chambers and rooms and corridors – and the hundreds if not thousands of zombies within them.
“Holy shit, did you see that?” I said.
“What?” Rahvi said.
“We just went over the carrier.”
Rahvi peered over the edge as Mack cut towards the Canberra, but we’d passed on by. Nothing beneath us now but deep blue water again.
Mack guided the RIB into the Canberra’s well dock, a sort of mooring hangar for water vessels at the stern of the ship. It was a hive of activity. Boats were being prepped and loaded, divers suiting up, the air alive with shouts and the groan of machinery. We disembarked, and Mack led us through the busy welter of uniforms and equipment. I caught a glimpse of half a dozen divers gearing up in thick black wetsuits and heavy-looking chest rigs.
Quite a few of the sailors and divers stopped what they were doing and turned to look at us. One of the divers gave me a broad smile and a thumbs up. They knew who we were, why we were here.
And then we were up the stairwell, up into the more familiar corridors of the Canberra. I was surprised by how pleased I felt to be back.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“To see the Commodore,” he said.
He eventually led us into some kind of operations room – a place I hadn’t seen before, dimly lit, with a dozen technicians sitting at ranked work stations, faces lit by the glow of their monitors. Up on larger wall-mounted screens were all kinds of images: radar, satellite feeds, most of it Greek to me, but there was something that looked like a sonar or echolocation device, a green-and-black 3D model of the Abraham Lincoln lying on its side, the seabed around it littered with smaller blobs – planes and choppers that must have come off the deck when it went down.
Commodore Norton was standing in the middle of it all, eyes locked on the screen, speaking into a telephone. We waited, and once he hung up, Mack coughed.
“Commodore, sir,” Petty Officer Mack said. “Sergeant Blake’s team from Jagungal.”
Norton turned, cast his eyes over us, stuck out a hand to shake Sergeant Blake’s. “Good to see you again, sir,” Blake said.
“Likewise. Let’s go have a private chat, shall we?”
Blake followed him towards the door, and Norton glanced back and said, “All of you.”
We followed him down more corridors and hallways, eventually arriving at a small room I took to be both his private office. It was surprisingly big and well-appointed, with a hardwood desk, Chesterfield couches and framed portraits of what I took to be former Navy officers lining the walls. No portholes, though; I guess we were close to the heart of the ship.
“Jeez, this is a bit flash,” I said. Lomax glared at me – all three of the privates were clearly uneasy about associating with somebody so high up the chain of command.
“Step up from the captain’s quarters on the HMAS Anzac, I can tell you that,” Norton said, as we all took a seat around the table. “They modelled it after US aircraft carriers. Supposedly I might have to host dignitaries or something. So much for that.”
“Commodore,” Sergeant Blake said. “If I could speak freely?”
“By all means.”
“Petty Officer Mack said our mission here was common knowledge amongst the crew. With all due respect, is that… wise?”
Norton frowned. “You don’t have a mission here, Sergeant. We have a mission here, collectively. I know how it was in the special forces, I know how things were before, but things have changed. Jagungal – the Endeavour – it’s common knowledge on Christmas Island now. It filters down, it can’t be contained. You already have civilian refugees there. When we were off Sydney we picked up at least one civilian radio broadcast talking about it. New England is already making veiled references about it.”
“Really?” Blake seemed surprised by that.
“Draeger’s off his rocker,” Norton said. “Well, he always was, everyone knows that. What he did in Afghanistan – he would have been court-martialled for that if we had any balls in this country, even the Yanks wouldn’t have stood for that…”
“Wait – what did he go?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” Norton said. “My point is, people know about Jagungal. They might not credit it, they might not believe it, but they know about the Endeavour and they know about the King twins. Army or Navy, enlisted men like to gossip. I’d rather be clear about what’s going on them have them whispering to each other in their bunks, dreaming up nonsense. Especially with some of what Draeger and New England have to say.”
“About what?” I demanded.
“It’s just propaganda,” Norton said. “I wouldn’t worry about New England. But given how things stand – given why we’re here, what we’re doing, what we hope to do with a warhead in the future – we need to be honest about things. I mean, Jesus, trying to co-ordinate with all these other governments and militaries? Some of them are still just clinging to life. I wouldn’t want the Prime Minister’s job. Or even Captain Tobias’ job. But I have my job, and that’s to keep this ship together and recover a nuclear warhead and – as crazy as this sounds to me, even now – use Matthew as a conduit for secure communications. I’m not going to deceive my crew about any of that.”
We digested that for a moment. Blake was frowning. “So,” Rahvi chimed in, “speaking of rogue groups, have you had any trouble from New England on the way up the coast?”
The commodore shook his head. “The coastal plains are still swarming with undead. Draeger has his stronghold in Armidale. His range doesn’t really go any further east than the mountains.”
“Heard he had a foothold in Queensland,” I said.
“He does, very far inland of here. No concern to us.”
“Why does everybody talk about this guy all the time?” Rickenbacker asked suddenly, then seemed to feel embarrassed for speaking up. “I mean… sorry, captain.”
“Commodore,” Norton said. “It’s fine. Draeger’s forces – his little kingdom, which he’s calling a republic – he’s far and away the largest safe zone controlled by a defected military commander, in both area and population. Most of the rest of these blokes have a few ships or a few battalions, sitting in some airbase or port town way up north. Anybody can claim a few hundred square kilometres up in the Gulf and say it’s a safe zone – good job, mate, you’re sitting on a bunch of empty savannah and desert. Draeger, on the other hand – Draeger’s managed to clear out a bunch of dead towns, put walls up, create these little fortress towns – and by all reports they’ve cleared out the countryside in between as well. Not totally safe, maybe nowhere is ever totally safe, but they have farms up and running. The roads are clear. They’ve got two big secure towns in Armidale and Tamworth, and a dozen smaller ones. They’re feeding people and they’re expanding. That’s an accomplishment.”
“How’d he do it?” Dresner asked.
“Good old fashioned totalitarianism,” Norton said. “Never thought I’d see that in this country.”
“You should get around more, then,” I said, looking at the number 552 tattooed on my hand.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Norton said. “These things never last. Frightened people will do whatever they need for security, but once they’re safe, once they’re well-fed, they’ll start pushing back. People aren’t robots.”
“Well, until then, we’re a bit too close for comfort to somebody like that,” I said. “I mean, he’d love to get his hands on a nuke, wouldn’t he?”
“As far as we know he has no idea we’re here,” Norton said. “It’s your job to keep it that way. And if worst comes to worst, you’re sitting aboard the biggest ship in the Royal Australian Navy.” He smiled at us.
With that, Petty Officer Mack was directed to show us to our rooms. (For all his talk about openness and honesty, I noticed Mack had waited patiently outside.) He led us back up towards a more familiar part of the ship, the area near the officers’ ward room where I’d spent those last few anxious days aboard the Ca
nberra. We’ll be sleeping in one of the general cabins, a narrow grey room with three bunks on either side of the walls. It might charitably be described as cosy, or uncharitably as coffin-like.
“Sorry, but we’ve got a bit of a full complement at this point,” Mack said. “Evacuated quite a few military bases around Sydney. A lot of them had civilians, too.”
“Where are they?”
“Cleared space for them on some of the lower vehicle decks we’re not using. Trust me, this place is the Hilton compared to that.”
I went and peered out of the porthole while the others stowed their bags. A clear blue sky, calm open ocean, and on the far right, the very northern tip of the island that borders the eastern side of the bay – bright green trees, a hint of yellow sand…
“Tell you what,” I said. “When they told us we were going up to Queensland I sort of imagined myself in a towel on a beach, not sharing a sardine can with you guys.”
“Don’t be a flogger,” Sergeant Blake said. “Corporal Rahvi and I are going back to the operations room to liaise.” (Oh, that was a good word. To elbow in, he meant.) “You occupy your time how you please, but stay on this deck, stay out of restricted areas.”
After they left I ended up taking the privates to the officers’ wardroom. They seemed nervous about walking in there – since none of them are remotely close to ever being officers – but I’d been allowed in there the last time I was aboard, so I was sticking with that. Books, DVDs, board games – amuse yourself while other people do the real work.
I’m itching to be down in the operations room with Blake and Rahvi, and maybe if I play my cards right I can get more access in the future, but I know better than to go charging off now. For a start, I’d get lost. So instead I’m playing Scrabble up here with the privates, like a kid at a cheap daycare centre on a rainy day, while five or six levels below me the Navy divers are probably already heading out to go plunging down into a sunken aircraft carrier.
It’s fine. It’s not my job. It’s still more interesting being here than in Jagungal.
End Times (Book 4): Destroyer of Worlds Page 14