The Tasmania Trilogy (Book 1): Breakdown

by Owen Baillie

  The staffroom was thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide. There were two sofas and a large table where the teachers ate their lunch and drank their coffee and tea. A sink lined the back wall, along with a microwave and a fridge.

  As he passed out of the staffroom and into the hallway, he noticed glass on the carpet. One of the back windows that led to the central courtyard had been broken. He hadn’t noticed it earlier and wondered if it had happened since he was last there.

  Jim put the boxes in the storage room, then went into his office to get a bin. A photo of he and Alesia greeted him as he entered. It was taken on their wedding day, near the Mersey Bluff Lighthouse in Devonport. Alesia had been happy then. So had Jim. He still was until a month ago, when she’d told him she no longer wanted to be his wife. They’d been married sixteen years, had two teenage girls—Cindy, who was fifteen, and thirteen-year-old Lana. Alesia had taken the girls with her when she left; Jim had vowed to fight for at least fifty percent custody. Make no mistake about that, he’d told his lawyer during their Christmas Eve meeting. Alesia was adamant the marriage was over, although she hadn’t even really given him any good reasons, other than it had been building for some years, and she needed a life change. What the fuck did that mean? So take a holiday, he had told her. Go up to Rockhampton and spend a month with your sister. Nope. Wasn’t going to cut the mustard. She wanted out. Jim cursed under his breath. It still drove his blood pressure up.

  He found an old newspaper on a shelf in the corner and unfolded it. July 10, 2013. Funnily enough, that was Alesia’s birthday. There had been no separation on July 10. They had eaten dinner at a local Chinese restaurant with a couple of their closest friends. Things had been pretty good, according to Jim. Little did he know.

  Bin and paper in hand, he returned to the broken window, wrapping the largest fragments of glass in the paper and sliding them into the container. He found a piece of MDF in a storage cupboard and placed it over the gap, then taped the edges with thick black electrical tape. Afterwards, he stood at the window looking out into the courtyard.

  There was a chook shed in the corner, a wide wooden stage near the library where the children performed a variety of shows or Jim would speak at special assemblies, and a wide red brick space in the middle of the courtyard where people sat whilst the children performed. On any school day, the sound of kids running, laughing, and making the most of life filled the air. How Jim wished things to return to normal. He’d come to realize some years ago that the school provided more than a job to him. Aside from his two girls, it was the most important thing in his life. Jim had a need to look after people, to guide and nurture them. Being principal of a primary school afforded that. He made a deep contribution to people’s lives and received the fulfillment he needed.

  The afternoon crept on. Jim spent the better part of the next hour inspecting the entire building perimeter for more damage. Afterwards, shirt damp and forehead dripping, Jim took a tall glass of water from the teacher’s kitchen, thinking about what else he had to do. Unload the remaining boxes from his car, and then go back for the rest. He remembered the frozen food they had stored in the canteen. The school council president had overcompensated for the end-of-year breakup party and, consequently, they decided to freeze the leftovers for use when they returned from holidays. He would check it out.

  He wandered down the main hallway through the front office building. The silence was something he’d never get used to. He often came in on weekends to prepare for the coming week or to follow up on something he hadn’t finished. He always missed the noise. The kids were an excitable lot—something was always happening, and there was never a shortage of smiles or kind words. He thought of the possibility that they wouldn’t be returning for the school year at the end of January and buried the idea, unable to accept it might not happen.

  The canteen was separate from the office building, a small structure attached to the school gymnasium. Jim crossed a courtyard beside the outdoor basketball court, wiping sweat from his head with the back of his hand. At least a hundred in the old scale, he guessed. He reached the canteen and let himself in through the side entrance. The front had a sliding aluminum window that fed a counter where kids lined up at lunchtime to order icy poles or cold drinks. In summer, it was guaranteed to have a queue any day of the week.

  It was almost hotter inside than out. If they lost power at all, the stuff would defrost in hours. Three large rectangle deep freezers lined up next to each other along one wall. Jim opened the first and enjoyed the icy gust of cold air. It had several bags of vegetables that were used for soup trials in the colder months—pumpkin, potato, and beans. There were two large boxes of Four ‘n’ Twenty meat pies, sausage rolls, and eight bags of long, thin icy poles they’d sold at the Christmas concert at a good profit. The second freezer was full of lasagna and burger mince, while the third had six bags of ice and eight boxes of Streets Paddlepop ice creams. All of this would be sold when the school year began again. He closed the lid and felt the power of the freezer sucking the air inside.

  The food was safe for now, but if the power went down, he’d need to plug the freezers into the generator. The school had a small one that would handle the need, but it had been sent out for repairs over the Christmas period. Jim had picked it from the repair shop but left it at home. He’d finish bringing the boxes of supplies and then bring that back, too.

  He closed up the canteen and returned to the car, where he finished carrying the rest of the cardboard boxes inside. As he was carrying the last package across the decking, he heard voices from around the side of the building. Jim put the supplies down and went to investigate.

  A teenage boy ran along the pathway towards the office. Jim knew him, as he did a second and third boy who ran towards them, glancing behind as though they were being chased. They had all attended the school several years ago, and were now in high school. Each wore shorts and T-shirts and had the sun-kissed look of boys who had spent their days outside for most of the summer.

  Jim stood on the stairs and watched them approach. They stopped about twenty yards from him, bent over, hands on their knees, panting. Each threw a glance back in turn with worry on their faces.

  “Hello boys,” Jim said, stepping down onto the pathway. They stood up, eyes wide, relief washing over their faces.

  Jan Sullivan hurried towards Jim. He was medium height with sandy blonde hair swept over his eyes. “Mr. Bennets.”

  “Everything all right?” The kid glanced back again. Jim followed his line of sight, but the canteen building blocked his view. “What is it, Jan? What are you boys running from?”

  It took a moment to gather himself. “Those things, sir. Those … people.”

  Uneasiness washed over Jim. “Who?”

  Jan glanced at the other boys, Sam and Jason. “They’re sick. Really sick.”

  “What happened?” Jim asked slowly.

  With a hitched voice and fidgety hands, Jan explained. Using a walkie-talkie set he’d received for Christmas, the boys had been communicating inside a mile radius from their own houses. There were sick people in each of their families, and the boys had been told to stay at home, but they had grown restless. Agreeing to meet halfway between each other’s properties, they ran into trouble along North Oatlands Road, where a handful of people had chased them.

  “Men and women. Their faces,” Jason said, his expression contorting with revulsion. He was the shortest of the boys, with a mop of dark hair. “Their skin was all pale and their necks were black and swollen.”

  “And their eyes,” Sam said. “Their eyes were weird. As if they were looking at you, but they couldn’t see you.”

  “They didn’t say anything,” Jason cut in. “And they were …” He glanced at the others, unable to finish.

  “Some of them were biting each other,” Jan said.

  Jim narrowed his eyes. “Biting?”

  “They were fighting.”

  “I saw one of them chewing another one’
s arm.”

  A sickly feeling washed over Jim. “Chewing? You sure?” But he read the terror on their faces and knew they believed what they had witnessed.

  “I saw it too,” Sam said, looking at the ground.

  Jan said, “People are going crazy. The website was saying it’s the heat, but some of the comments reckon it’s the flu virus making people want to kill each other.”

  Jim pushed on with the conversation. “What did you boys do then?”

  Jan shrugged. “We ran this way.”

  “Did they see you?” They all nodded. “You shouldn’t have left your houses.” But Jim felt like a hypocrite. “Where did you lose them?”

  “On the corner of North Oatlands and the main road.”

  It was worse than he thought. “I’m heading back home. I’ll drop you off on the way.”

  With an unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach, Jim locked the doors and led the boys towards the car. As he drove away, he tuned the radio to the ABC, where they had an updated news report about a group of sick attacking people standing outside a hospital in Hobart. Police had shot and killed another dozen. When he looked back on it later, Jim pinpointed that to be the time when the world had truly begun to spiral out of control.

  7

  Kumiko found a man standing over her grumbling. Bloody marks surrounded his mouth and his teeth speckled with flesh. The whites of his eyes were bright red and his complexion pasty, as though all the color had been drained. Dark, scraggy grey hair covered his face and fell around his shoulders. He was wearing black, threadbare clothes and smelt as though he hadn’t bathed in weeks. This is what the news was talking about. He was one of the infected.

  “Piss off,” she spat as she crawled backwards away from him, tiny stones digging into her palms and knees. The man shuffled after her, leaving a trail of dark muck from his shoe on the cracked pavement. He lifted his head and pushed the hair away.

  She scrambled to her feet and kicked him in the balls. His face didn’t change. Kumiko glanced in either direction, looking for support, but the lot was empty, and he was on her before she escaped.

  He pushed her forward. She grazed her palms as she fell, drawing in a sharp breath, and then the man’s hot, smelly body was pressing on her. Grunting, she pushed his shoulder away and wriggled out from underneath him. He took hold of her left foot and tried to drag her backwards. Kumiko shook her leg and thrust out her right foot, striking the man in the jaw, but he held on.

  Strong hands held tight. He pulled her towards him and opened his mouth, revealing those bloody teeth again. Kumiko twisted her leg and managed to get her foot free. She gave a short, sharp kick, her iron leg from years of dancing hitting its mark with a crack, and the man’s eyes rolled back.

  They both climbed to their feet at the same time, pain and fear washing over her simultaneously. Before she could flee, he lunged at her, rough hands grabbing her small breasts. She pushed him away, twisting to break his hold, and stumbled backwards. He fell and they tumbled to the concrete, her left hand and elbow breaking the fall.

  Pain shot up her arm. “I said piss off!”

  She fought on, trying to crawl free, despite the strong hands latching onto her ankles. She spun around to face it, spotting the thing’s twisted face, but the strength in its grip held her feet down. It had her. She could no longer kick free or even stand up to flee as he wriggled onto her legs. Instinct took over. She sat up, fists swinging as she’d been taught in Boxercise class—left, right, left, right—connecting with the man’s head. But his face didn’t register, taking each blow with disregard. She tried to roll again, clawing at the concrete for her escape. The thing pulled on her ankles and dragged her over the rough surface.

  There was a heavy sound like a sandbag hitting the ground and suddenly her ankles were free. Kumiko crawled away from it and turned to find a man standing over her attacker, who now lay slumped on the ground. He was middle-aged, heavyset, with a long grey beard and shaved head. He wore dark glasses and at first, she thought he was wearing a dark shirt, until she realized his arms were so heavily tattooed she couldn’t see the flesh. He was holding an iron bar.

  Feeling deep relief, Kumiko climbed to her feet, the wheeze in her chest more pronounced now. “Thanks,” she managed. “I thought the asshole had me.”

  The biker poked the sick man with his foot. “He get you?” She shook her head and coughed. The man glanced around. “I’d be getting inside fast if I was you.”

  “I need to find a chemist.”

  The man raised the iron bar and pointed down the street. “There’s a chemist up that way. Indian fella. I was there yesterday. Didn’t have what I wanted though.” He tipped the bar in that direction. “But I’m not sure you wanna go down there right now.” Kumiko followed his gaze and saw the people who were fighting.

  “I’ve got no choice.” Her lungs were hurting, her breath getting more difficult every minute. The attack would not have helped.

  “Asthma?” She nodded. “My mom used to get it real bad,” the man added before he started backing away.

  “Where are you going?”

  “In there,” he said, pointing towards the hospital.

  Kumiko shook her head. “It’s full. They’re not letting people in.” The man raised his eyebrows. “But there’s a door along the side of the building where they take out the trash.” She indicated the direction. “You might get lucky there. It worked for my parents.”

  He glanced at the hospital, then back to her. “Thanks.”

  “Wait,” Kumiko said. The biker turned back. “Have you ever seen anything like that before? I’ve heard about them on the news but …”

  The man nodded. “They’ll be everywhere, soon. The infection is spreading. It doesn’t take much. If they bite or scratch … it’s curtains for you.” He looked past her at the distant shouting and noise from the street. “Listen, I came from Launceston. It’s a whole lot worse there. Stay off the streets. I wouldn’t even go to your chemist unless you really need it.”

  “I do.” She took a deep breath and launched into a raspy cough.

  He grimaced. “That don’t sound too good.” A boom sounded in the distance. The man started walking away. “Get inside as fast as you can.”

  Kumiko hurried to her car. It was difficult not to stop and think about everything that had happened in the last few days. The world was a different place. She slid in behind the wheel, wincing at the heat inside her little car. She wondered if it was the unrelenting heat making everybody go mad. With her hands shaking, it took a few goes to get the key into the slot.

  “Come on, baby, come on.”

  It rumbled into life. She reached for the AC button and turned it, feeling the car groan. It was just too hot not to run it. She yanked the stick into reverse, then took it backwards, glass crunching and popping under the tires. She glanced through the back and side windows, trying to get a location on all the commotion in the streets.

  As she pulled out from behind a tree, she spotted a police car parked on the opposite side of the road. She recalled what her father had said—that the police were getting sicker than everyone else because they were exposed to the public more. Their numbers had been severely reduced. There was no sign of any officers.

  From the fight beyond Crowy’s Boats, a handful of people walked in her direction. Although they were still a distance away, their movements appeared odd, and Kumiko realized they were probably infected, too. Three men crossed the curb, hurrying their pace. She pushed the gearstick into drive and slammed her foot down on the accelerator. The car shot off towards the exit with a loud whine. As she closed in on the exit, Kumiko feathered the brake and glanced up into the mirror. They were still coming. As she turned the last corner, a banging noise sounded from the trunk. In the mirror, she saw a man slam his fist and a woman reach for the car. She didn’t know where they had come from, but the woman’s red eyes and washed-out face confirmed her fears.

  The car moved away and created
a gap. Kumiko approached the exit and knew she should slow down, but panic kept her foot on the pedal. The wheels slid over the gravel as she made the turn. She lost control momentarily, but when she hit the asphalt, the car straightened and things were righted again.

  She checked the rearview mirror once more and saw the gap had become fifty yards, and she felt some relief. Her breathing was worse than ever though. She rolled on through the roundabout in the direction the man had pointed. She had to find the chemist soon; although she wondered how she would ever get back to the hospital.

  Kumiko took a left onto the other side of Moriarty Road, ignoring the small gathering of people still fighting at the edge of the roundabout. She followed the street, passing residential houses on both sides of the road, and in the distance, spied a strip of stores. There were few cars here, but the number of people wandering about concerned her. They were gathered in small pockets and spread along the length of the street.

  As she drove on, a high-pitched whining noise sounded from beneath the engine. Kumiko didn’t understand cars, and if the truth be told, they scared her a little. Her great fear was breaking down in the middle of traffic and wearing the shame of causing congestion. She accelerated, but the engine didn’t respond. She eased off, trying to ignore it and focus on the stores ahead.

  The old buildings, with their bull-nosed verandahs covering the sidewalk and their peaked and gabled roofs, needed a fresh coat of paint. There was a hairdresser, a florist, a pizza shop—all closed. And no pharmacy. A side street split the group, and there were more on the other side, which gave her hope. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. Would it even be open? One could argue it wasn’t a matter of life and death, but as a little girl, she’d been rushed to the hospital in an ambulance twice.

  When she applied more pressure to the accelerator, the car responded begrudgingly, the revolutions needle flickering near the top of the dial. She eased off and it dropped back. She slowed and drove on a little further, the car growing less responsive. She passed through a set of traffic lights, and then a sign caught her eye—the purple and green FULL LIFE PHARMACY logo. She launched into a coughing fit.