The Tasmania Trilogy (Book 1): Breakdown

by Owen Baillie

  “Zombies? I hate that word. It’s so … childish.”

  “Get used to it.”

  Her mind was spinning, thinking of her mother. “Does everyone that gets sick turn into … a zombie?”

  “Not everyone. But you have to be lucky. Real lucky.”

  They reached the crest of the slope, where a tree-lined street intersected on the left. There was a smoky pileup on the other side of the road. Two sedans had driven head-on into each other. There was no sign of either driver, but a man appeared from the back end of the furthest sedan as though trying to get at something inside. Blue Jeans grabbed Kumiko by the arm and pulled her towards the curb, where an orange car with a rusted fender sat. They squatted behind it with their backs pressed against the doors and their heads down low.

  “What is it?” Kumiko asked.

  Whispering, Blue Jeans said, “He’s infected. You can always tell by the eyes.”

  Kumiko tried to peer over the top of the door. Blue Jeans yanked her down by the T-shirt. “Stop bloody pulling on me.”

  “Just trying to look out for you. We have to get off the street. Things are about to get a whole lot worse, and you don’t want to be around when they do.”

  “I need to get back to the hospital. My parents are there. My mother is … sick. I left them and I just want to get back there and make sure she is all right.”

  Blue Jeans considered what she said. “Mersey Community?” Kumiko nodded. “I can drive you there.”

  She wished she still had her own car, but his offer would have to do. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that. Where exactly is your car?”

  “Right there,” he said, pointing parallel to the curb. “The green one.”

  A shiny little green Toyota, much too small for Blue Jeans, sat at the edge of the curb. “Why don’t we just run for it?”

  “Give me a second.” Blue Jeans peered over the edge of the door. “I can’t see him anymore.” He got down onto his belly and crawled forward, underneath the vehicle. Kumiko didn’t think his belly would fit, but he pressed himself low and slid forward until only the backs of his legs were visible. She checked the space around her, half expecting the infected man might sneak up on them, but it was clear, for now. Finally, after what felt like forever, Blue Jeans began to crawl back.

  Grease marks covered the back of his blue shirt. “There’s more of them, maybe four or five picking through the wreckage of the crash. Somebody must have died in there and they’re trying to get at it.”

  “Gross.”

  “If they stay interested in that, we can make a run for it.” Kumiko agreed. “What’s your name, anyway?” She told him. “I’m Dan. Run straight for the car. If one of them comes for you, just keep running. Okay?”

  Dan edged alongside car’s rusted panels, nodding for her to follow. Kumiko pushed in close behind him, surprised at her trust of a man she knew so little. What if he was some sort of murderer who planned to kidnap her?

  He stopped at the end of the trunk and peered around the corner, then turned back to her and said, “You ready?” Kumiko took another puff of her inhaler and gave him a thumbs up. “Go.”

  He leapt out into the curb and ran straight for his green car about twenty yards ahead. Kumiko followed, but as she pushed off the rear panel, her T-shirt caught on the twisted fender and yanked her backwards. She cursed, reached back, and pulled on the fabric, but it wouldn’t come free. For a moment, she didn’t think she was going to get it off, but then she leaned forward and the thing came loose. She leapt to her feet and ran.

  Two of the infected people were still at one of the smashed vehicles, fighting over the contents within. Ahead, Dan had reached his car. Alerted to her movement, two more started for Kumiko, but they were slow and bumbling, like the man in the pharmacy, and she felt sure of beating them. She leapt over a pile of rubbish in the gutter and sprinted for the passenger’s door. Dan was in the driver’s seat, working on the ignition. As Kumiko arrived, the engine whined and spluttered into life with a rumble and rattle. She put a hand on the door and pulled hard. It came open with a loud creak as the two infected loped around the hood after her, slobbering and groaning, one reaching out with a palsied hand as she ducked down into the seat.

  Dan slammed the accelerator and the small car leapt away from the curb, throwing Kumiko back into her seat just as a hand touched her thigh. She glanced up a woman’s pallid face, her large eyes bloodshot and eager. The woman disappeared and the door struck the second infected, knocking it into the gutter. Kumiko pulled the belt around and stuck it into the holder, her heart hammering.

  “Bloody hell, that was close,” Dan said, laughing in a mad cackle.

  “Yeah,” Kumiko said, wondering what might have happened to her had he not been drawn to the pharmacy at that exact moment. At the next intersection, he turned left and took them in the direction of the hospital. “What were you doing at the pharmacy?”

  Dan flipped his hat off, slung it into the back seat, then ran a hand through his spiky dark-red hair. “My grandmother. She used to live down this way and went to that pharmacy for years. She’s a bit,” he made a twirling motion with his hand. “She won’t accept medicine from anywhere else.”

  “You’re a good grandson.”

  He shrugged. “As I told you, I’m a zombie and post-apocalyptic junkie. I’ve been waiting for it to happen all my life.” He smiled, revealing straight teeth. Kumiko still didn’t know if he was serious or not.

  The first drops of rain hit the windscreen. Dan pulled the wiper lever and the blades smudged dirt across the window. He pushed a button and water sprayed onto the glass. This time, the wipers did their trick and cleared the view.

  They took a right turn, then another left, until, in the distance, above the trees, Kumiko spotted the upper levels of the hospital.

  “I don’t know how close I’ll be able to get you. I guess it depends on how crazy it is there.”

  “It was crazy when I left.”

  They drew nearer, edging their way through the back streets. There were people wandering about, but Kumiko couldn’t tell if they were infected or not. In some places, Dan had to slow right down with the gap no more than ten inches where cars had been left on both sides of the street. From behind the mingle of houses and trees, several plumes of smoke reached into the sky. Down one street, they saw a car rammed into a telephone pole and heard the sound of at least three different alarms blaring.

  Dan wiped his brow with the back of his forearm. “Hospital’s not far. I’ll get you as close to the entrance as I can.”

  Kumiko smiled. “Thank you so much. I don’t think I would have made it without you.”

  He gave an awkward smile. “I’m sure you would have.” He slowed as they approached another intersection. “You want me to come into the hospital with you. I could park the—”

  “No. That’s okay. You’ve done enough. You should get back to your grandmother.”

  He nodded. “I do hate leaving her alone.”

  As they turned the corner, Kumiko saw a flash of movement, followed by a terrific bang, and then they were spinning. They hit the gutter with a deafening crunch. Kumiko struck her head and blacked out.

  12

  They were locked safely inside the hospital for now. Probably the safest place to be, Juliet thought, now they’d locked up the dead and considering what was happening outside. Whilst many of the people who had fled the ER had left the hospital grounds, there were still a number of them outside the front doors who wanted to get back in. Problem was, many of those outside the doors were behaving as the attackers had inside the hospital. Frank and Seth agreed they were all infected, and they would have to keep the doors shut indefinitely.

  Juliet strolled back across the emergency room, taking it all in. Chairs were scattered across the room—many overturned, one or two broken into pieces. Splashes of blood streaked the floor, and there were puddles in places. The bodies remained, those who could not be tended, eyes forever staring. She had
observed plenty in her time, but never like this. They needed to clean up the area and move the patients back there.

  She veered down the first corridor and looked in on them. It was full of people. Many were sobbing. Others hung their heads in their hands. Some were still sick, lying with their eyes closed.

  A man in work boots, an AC/DC T-shirt, and a leather vest approached her. He had a shaved head, a long grey beard, and his arms were heavily tattooed. Juliet remembered him coming to her aid with a chair after she had struck the infected man with the fire extinguisher. She also remembered him pushing people behind himself and helping those who had fallen to their feet.

  “Thank you,” she said, offering a smile. “There might have been even more people killed if it wasn’t for you.”

  He put his hands up as if to say it wasn’t him. The wrinkles around his eyes and face suggested he was in his fifties. The AC/DC logo and the tattoos on his forearms were covered in blood. “Lady, I’m not the one who took that thing on first.”

  “We were lucky.” She started walking away. “Come with me.” There was an unused pathology cupboard near the nurse’s station. Juliet led the man there and ran cold water at a sink. “What’s your name?”

  “William, or Bill. My friends call me Skoota.”

  Juliet took a warm, soapy cloth and began to wipe the blood off Bill’s arms. “Any cuts or bites?”

  “Nope. None of this is my own.”

  “Why are you at the hospital?”

  “I’m a diabetic. On my last insulin cartridge. I’ve tried three chemists and none of them have stock. Two of them had their front windows smashed in. Thought there might be some here.”

  Juliet tossed a dirty wipe into the wastebasket. “You’re in luck, Bill.” He raised his eyebrows. “We don’t have a lot of supplies, but insulin is one thing we do have.”

  “You might have just saved my life,” Bill said, the edge of his mouth curled slightly beneath the bushy beard.

  “How long since you were diagnosed?”

  “Forty-three years. Kinda used to it now.”

  Juliet responded with a soft whistling noise as she wiped down the first arm with a dry cloth and started on the second. “You got family?”

  “Divorced. No kids. Got a brother down in Hobart.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Don’t know. Always out fishing.” Juliet wiped the last of the blood from his right arm and handed him a dry towel. Bill did the rest. “Thank you.”

  “I’ve been stuck in here for the last three days. What’s it like out there?”

  His brow furrowed. At first, she thought he wasn’t going to say anything. Then he sighed. “You’re lucky. It ain’t good. More and more people are infected like the ones we saw out there.”

  “Have you seen any like that before?”

  “Yeah. Devonport. And the goddamn car park of this hospital.”

  “What do you think it is?”

  Bill shrugged. “I don’t know. I was in the US once and saw a dog with rabies. Looks a bit like that. They were bloody aggressive. My only advice is that if you come face-to-face, kill it, just like we did out there. Let them bite you and you’ll either die from the wound or end up like that.”

  “I think you’re right. It scares me to death. And the doctors think the same thing. They think it’s the flu causing it. Heaven help those who’re sick.”

  She promised to find Bill some insulin and sent him back to the waiting room. After he left, Juliet found Deirdre and Tara attending the sick and injured in other examination rooms. There were several people with bites from the attacks, and she thought of what Bill had said. They had a small supply of tetanus and hepatitis shots, so she had the other nurses administer those for the bites, isolate those people into the furthest examination rooms, and then lock the ones with flu symptoms in the closest rooms. It was harsh but necessary.

  One after the other, Juliet rolled the rickety steel tables with their dead bodies down the long hallway to the laundry room, certain no patients or citizens would wander that far from the main waiting room. She thought of the man who had come back to life. It was both unsettling and extraordinary. Perhaps he hadn’t been dead, after all. She’d heard of the rare occasion when a doctor pronounced death, only to retract the call later on. Frank had supervised though, and observing the man herself, Juliet knew categorically that he was dead. It made no sense.

  When only two bodies remained, Seth Logie helped her, stacking them inside the large room until the beds and tables were touching sides with little space to walk around. After they closed the doors, Seth used a cable tie to secure the handles and stuck a big sticker on the front that said: DO NOT OPEN.

  As she walked back towards the front of the emergency department, Juliet’s mind began to clear. Many of the patients had fled when the infected had begun to bite. It had addressed the large number of patients to attend and eased the space problem, too. Now was the time to clean things up. Several able citizens—including Bill—were already helping clear the main waiting room. Mop buckets full of boiling water and bubbling with disinfectant had been rolled out, and they began to wash the floors down. Tables and chairs were righted, couches moved out of the way for better access. The mop water soon turned red but the floors returned to a semblance of their former self. Betty was still too distressed to do anything and sat staring into space behind the administration window. Someone had called the police, but the phones went straight to a recorded message. For now, they were on their own.

  As she reached the main waiting room, the pain and discomfort she’d felt earlier had either stopped or she had been too busy to notice. Now that things had quieted down, she suddenly felt desperate to use the bathroom, as though her body had previously been too busy for such a thing. She left the main waiting room and went to the staff bathroom. After she’d finished in the cubicle, she stood at the sink, looking at her reflection in the mirror. Dark bags cast shadows beneath her eyes. Her skin was pale and blotchy, her lips dry and damaged. She found no element of beauty in herself. She began to scrub the streaks of red from her hands, and as the flowing water turned a shade of red, she rubbed harder, insistent on getting rid of every trace of blood. She splashed water on her face, once, twice, three times, until her eyes were red. With her face and hands dripping, she stared at her image for a long time, until she could stand it no more.

  Back in the main waiting room, they had changed the furniture around to better suit the circumstances. It no longer resembled a hospital waiting room. Most of the furniture had been used to fortify the exterior windows. Sofas had been placed along the front, and two large tables had been shoved up against the doors, leaving a large space in the center of the room.

  “There’ still a few that need treatment,” Tara said after guiding the last elderly woman to one of the examination rooms. “Where are Seth and Frank?”

  “I’ll get Frank,” Juliet said.

  But he caught her on the way, tugging at her shirt and pulling her aside. “There’s a few more that need attention,” Juliet said.

  His expression was grim, and she knew instantly something was wrong. He looked around to ensure they were alone. “It’s Bianca. She’s been bitten.”

  “What? How?”

  “The biter went for an old woman. Bianca tried to stop her, and she went down. It fell on her and bit her before she moved away.”

  “Where?” Frank pointed to his upper arm, and Juliet felt sick. “Shit. Shit. What can we do? How do we treat it? What about a tetanus shot? Or hepatitis?”

  “Both are worth a try.”

  “Antibiotics?”

  “Yes, let’s try some daptomycin. It’s a guess, but I can’t think of anything else at this point.”

  “We should keep it quiet. Nobody needs to know,” Juliet said, to which Frank nodded. “Let’s not give up yet. “

  As she turned away, Frank said, “Juliet?” She turned back. “Thanks.” She gave a weary smile.

  Back in the w
aiting room, Seth Logie was sewing up a patient who had cut his hand on a glass. A heavy thud sounded from the front entrance doors. Someone was banging on the glass. Juliet hurried over, joining several others, including Tara and Bill. Juliet felt glad to have the big biker at her side. The curtains had been shut to isolate them from what was happening outside. Now, Juliet pulled them aside and peered through the gap. It was raining and there was a big man standing at the entrance, holding a woman in his arms. Someone inside the hospital called out not to open the door.

  The man shouted, “Open up, or I’ll break the door down and let these fucking things in!”

  13

  Mac sat in the car, rehearsing multiple ways to get both Jessica and the unconscious man inside the hospital. The entrance to the emergency department was full of infected people desperate for the same. It would be a battle, no doubt. He wished he had the trusty weapons he carried during his rotations in Afghanistan: an M4 assault rifle or the Heckler & Koch USP 9mm handgun in a chest holster on his vest. Either of them would make very short work of the traffic.

  They were onto his SUV before Mac had unclipped his belt, sensing it the way a dog senses its evening feed from its master. Two of them—a puffy-faced male in an orderly uniform and a gaunt woman in a long, white sundress with scraggy blonde hair—came to the driver-side window to greet him. Mac pulled his seat all the way back then climbed into the back and opened the rear passenger door. It was a move he’d been taught early on, and it protected him from the threat on the driver’s side. The repulsive odor hit him. He pulled Jessica’s door open, and she moved towards him with infinite pain on her face.

  “Don’t let those things get me.”