Base

by Cathleen Ross

  Ruth stepped back wanting to get away from him. ‘I don’t want you to. I’ve never asked you to. I don’t want that on my conscience.’ She steeled herself not to react to the hurt in his face. This was a man who cuffed her to his bed and forced her to his will. It was a crazy situation in a city gone mad. This sight was confronting and it made her want to run. Sydney had over four and a half million people, a possible gigantic horde. Getting on her boat and motoring away from this virus-ridden city made sense. She noticed Jack studying her. Her inner struggle must have showed on her face.

  ‘You need a taste of how we navy men fight back.’ He spun her around and positioned her in front of him, then raised his radio to his lips and gave an order.

  Rock music started playing from the various navy vessels stationed evenly on the water along the sea front. Over the pulsating beat the sound of groaning intensified. The horde pushed forward with an awkward, shuffling gait so that the ones in front fell over the low concrete wall of The Esplanade and onto the sand before climbing to their feet. Arms outstretched they moved towards the shoreline until Ruth could no longer see the sand. Sickened by the horror of it, she tried to unravel Jack’s arms from around her, but he stood behind her, his frame solid, his grip on her firm. ‘Patience, Ruth.’

  She looked up into his face. His eyes gleamed, alive with concentration. Jack was playing war games.

  Jack spoke into his radio and gave another command.

  The rattle of machine guns burst into the air. Ruth held her hands to her ears. Braindeads dropped into the water, more followed until the sea bubbled with bodies. And still they came, down the wide streets that led from Military Road to the sea. Machine gun fire sounded further north and she wondered if Jack had boats stationed as far as The Spit. After some time the machine gun fire stopped but the pulsating music continued. Braindeads stumbled over other braindeads as they were drawn towards the noise. Off the boardwalk they fell, headfirst into the water below.

  Ruth shuddered as she imagined them walking on the bottom of the seabed towards her. She could almost feel them dragging her down by her ankles. Panic rose in her gut. Pulling Jack’s arms from her, she turned to escape and run back into the base.

  Jack grabbed her elbow. ‘What’s up? The music too loud for you? Don’t go. You’ll miss the best part.’

  ‘Let me go, Jack.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  The shoreline beyond the water’s edge exploded right the way along Balmoral Beach, past the island and as far as she could see. The sea surged in to fill the pits swallowing braindeads.

  Ruth leapt out of her skin. ‘What the hell was that?’

  ‘See that vessel?’ He pointed to a military grey ship. ‘That’s a Huon class minehunter. We fought a shit-load of braindeads over at Waverton to get that. Saved men who knew how to run the sucker. The mine laying divers wanted a show of force.’

  Ruth ran her gaze over him. He stood proud, fire blazing in his eyes. A navy man in his prime. A hot, handsome, confident fighter. ‘I’m sure the braindeads understood that.’ He was enjoying this. To her, this scene was hideous. A deep sense of mourning lay in the pit of her stomach. These viral-affected people had been her friends, her patients, her work colleagues and now they were monsters. Braindeads were deadly and Jack was eradicating them, which was right, but that didn’t mean she should have to stay and fight. The horror reinforced her decision to run. She wanted out of here.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’re safe where you are.’

  ‘Yeah, you need to keep me intact. I get it. Pussy is important to you.’ Confronted by the dreadfulness as the water surged with body parts, she wanted to get away. She jerked her arm out of his hold.

  Jack frowned. ‘Damn it, Ruth. What is wrong with you?’

  ‘Believe me. There’s nothing wrong with me.’ He was enjoying this. She couldn’t even look at him she was so repulsed. This was never intended to be a walk to knock some sense into her. This was a ‘shock and awe’ display. To her left, Ruth could see the braindeads moving away from the base fence line that had nearly been compromised during the night, attracted to the pulsating music and the explosions. When the braindeads walked into the water, the sea seemed to boil with movement in front of her eyes. Acid gorge burned the back of her throat and she thought she was going to vomit.

  ‘The harbour bull sharks will get a feast tonight.’

  ‘Oh my God. I can’t watch anymore.’ Ruth’s ears rang from the music and the explosions. The stink of death seemed to invade her lungs and she wondered if she’d ever be able to scrub the smell away. Her stomach heaved. She could barely hold on to its contents. Innately, she knew Jack had the right strategy. Annihilation worked. Better than the medical profession’s ineffectual response to this damned virus. With all the brilliant people in her profession, why had no one been able to contain this epidemic? Too many good people had been lost.

  ‘I need to stay and supervise this right now, but I was hoping you might like to go for a swim in the rock pools later on. They’re not contaminated.’

  ‘You can’t possibly think I’m going to swim ever again after seeing this…this horror.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be swimming out to that boat of yours anytime soon. I’ll have Hunter escort you back to the house.’ Jack took the chain holding the key from around his neck.

  Ruth froze as the key dangled in front of her. ‘You are a real bastard, you know that? You took me here to terrorise me into staying.’

  ‘Glad it finally sank in that you’re safer here. For a smart person, you can be frustratingly slow sometimes.’

  Ruth slapped his face.

  Jack grabbed her wrist, his face and throat suffused with blood as if he were barely hanging on to his anger. ‘I brought you down here to knock some reality into you. Now hand over the boat key or I’ll order the men to sink it.’

  ‘You don’t know which one is mine. Let go of me.’

  ‘I saw the direction you looked in. Give it up or I’ll blow the lot of them.’

  ‘You have no idea how much I despise you. You can trap me in your house, force me to sleep in your bed, but you can wipe that smug look off your face because I will never care for you.’ Ruth yanked her wrist from his grip, reached into her pocket and threw the key in his face.

  Chapter 8

  The day’s work done, Jack took his house key from Hunter, dismissed him and unlocked his front door. He didn’t understand Ruth. How had showing her how they eradicated the braindeads become a problem? Hell. Didn’t she understand they were the enemy? Ruth was a brilliant woman, one of the smartest he’d ever met, but that wouldn’t save her if a braindead went for her. One could tear her apart in seconds. Sometimes brilliant people missed out on the practical brain chip. Escaping on a boat wouldn’t help. At some time she’d fall prey to another boat full of men who could rape her. He rubbed his cheek. It stung from Ruth’s slap. Ruth needed to ‘get’ how dangerous it was out there. She would never survive on her own. If he had to take one slap, then he was fine with that.

  Still, his men had put a lot of effort into Operation Braindead. Two hours of almost solid machine gun fire, along with the dangerous laying of mines and they’d cleared the horde, his men picking off the stragglers with their high-powered rifles. Most people would have been delighted they were eliminating the enemy. But Ruth? No. She just saw her foolish escape route cut off. He locked the front door behind him. ‘Ruth?’

  No answer. Jack stepped into the entry, heard the shower, so he walked down the hallway and deposited some clothes he’d selected from Ruth’s apartment and put them on the bed. She’d be pleased with the fresh clothes. He owed her that. The stink of braindead clung to him permeating his uniform so he stripped it off and threw it into the hamper. He strode naked to the bathroom knowing Ruth was in there. Shower time was fast becoming his favourite time of the day if Ruth was in there. It didn’t matter how many times he touched her; he still wanted more. Ruth wasn’t right about how he thought about her
. She wasn’t just pussy for him. Hell, he hadn’t even had any of Ruth’s.

  He opened the bathroom door, just as Ruth turned off the shower taps. Damn. He loved it when Ruth was at her most vulnerable. Soft and sexy. Hell. He was hard just thinking about it.

  Ruth turned, took one look at him and grabbed her towel, covering herself as fast as possible. Wariness made her sky-blue eyes darken. Her hair was wet so that it was flat against her head, moulding her elfin face. She was beautiful. He’d better not come across as a sex-starved desperate even if he was a sexed-starved desperate. He needed to get things on a better footing since this afternoon hadn’t gone so well. ‘Hi, Ruth. I brought you some clothes from your apartment.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take me with you? I didn’t get time to pack anything precious.’

  ‘You slapped my face and stormed off, remember?’

  ‘Because you threatened to shoot my boat out of the water.’

  Jack tried a different tack. ‘There didn’t seem to be a lot of underwear in your top drawer but I’ve left what there was on our bed.’ He’d enjoyed selecting the sheer, black set of designer bra and panties she’d had there. There were also some crotchless undies. Who knew Ruth was in to kink? He could just imagine her in them, laying back on their bed and spreading her legs.

  Her eyes popped as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You’ve been in my underwear drawer?’

  Actually he also brought her back a vibrator from her bedside drawer, but he didn’t think from the expression on her face that he should mention it. ‘You didn’t seem to have many pairs. I grabbed some of the dresses from your rack and put them into a bag. Dinner is 7 pm in the Mess tonight. Thought you might like to change out of your jeans.’

  Ruth stormed past him into the bedroom.

  He followed her to see her lifting the lacy, sheer briefs. Right now, he’d like nothing more than to see her slide those on and bend over. Man he’d better go and shower. He was so hard he must look like a hungry dog.

  ‘These were a joke birthday gift from Sue. She thought my sex life needed spicing up.’ Ruth picked up the frilly white crotchless briefs. ‘I can’t believe you selected the most impractical underwear in my drawer.’

  ‘Sue has great taste.’

  If her eyes had been lasers, he would have been cut to ribbons. ‘You really are pathetic, you know that?’

  Jack shrugged. ‘Go commando. I don’t mind.’ From her expression, he decided to leave the room. Lucky she didn’t have access to weapons.

  Ruth pulled the hem of her dress down as she walked into the Mess. She owned two mini dresses, which came to mid thigh, short for her, and Jack had brought both of them back, clearly ignoring her practical clothes. The G-string seemed to be flossing her butt, which wasn’t so comfortable either. At least he’d picked up her boots, which came to her knee so she wasn’t showing too much flesh. The only upside was that she’d been able to hand wash her jeans and hang them out on the line. She looked around the hall noticing the gaze of the navy men checking her out.

  ‘Ruth. You look nice dressed up.’ Lea came over and hugged her.

  ‘Lea. How are you?’ Ruth hugged her back before pulling away and studying her friend. Lea glowed in a way she’d never seen before. Her crystal-blue eyes shone and her cheeks were pink. Her mouth had a swollen, soft look, she’d never noticed.

  ‘I’m so happy. Phil’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.’

  ‘But you hardly know the man.’ Ruth glanced over to Phil Armstrong who was talking to Jack. He was certainly one of the best-looking men she’d seen. He scrubbed up so perfectly she wondered if he spent more time in front of the mirror than Sue.

  ‘But, Ruth, he knows how important my work is to me and he respects that. Phil’s set me up in the most fantastic lab. He’s so good to me. So kind. He makes sure I have everything I need. I even have two female lab assistants to help me do all the blood analysis.’

  ‘Guess you were wrong about the women becoming sex slaves on the base,’ Sue added, as she joined them.

  ‘How old are the lab assistants?’ Ruth asked.

  ‘In their fifties. Why?’ Lea asked.

  Ruth looked at Jack and narrowed her eyes. ‘I guess sex slavery has a cut off age.’

  ‘Hi, Sue,’ Lea said, turning to her. ‘How’s Vassar’s brother?’

  ‘I’ve just come from there. I took Tom some dinner and Mike’s conscious. He seems to be fighting the fever. Tom even got him to swallow a mouthful of food.’

  Lea scratched her head. ‘Ruth, that blood test you took from Mike Vassar, when I examined it, I noticed some of the cell walls were thicker. The virus couldn’t penetrate them easily. It’s giving him a fighting chance.’

  Ruth massaged her forehead. ‘I checked on Mike this afternoon. He hasn’t turned but he still could. I’ve never seen that before. Usually, bitten patients develop a fever, lose consciousness, die and turn. Their immune systems can’t fight this virus.’

  ‘Could you bring me another blood sample from Mike tomorrow? I want to see how he’s progressing.’ Lea’s face lit up with excitement. ‘Imagine if we found a cure?’

  ‘Look I didn’t want to say too much to Vassar, but don’t get too hopeful. The other patient died and he only had a scratch,’ Ruth said.

  ‘That patient’s cell walls had thickened too but not enough to save him. His results were equivalent to the tests we ran in the lab,’ Lea said. ‘For some reason Mike Vassar responded better to the antiviral.’

  ‘Not everyone responds the same way to treatment. Sometimes there’s a reason why one patient does better than the other. What is it about Mike Vassar?’ Ruth asked.

  Jack came over and put his arm around Ruth’s shoulders in a proprietorial fashion. She refrained from stamping on his foot.

  ‘Time to take your seat. We keep a punctual routine.’ He led her to the table and pulled out the chair on his right hand side for her.

  Lieutenant Armstrong sat on her right and then a woman she didn’t recognise sat next to Armstrong. Jack hadn’t mentioned they’d found another female. ‘Hello, I’m Ruth,’ she said, introducing herself.

  ‘Helen,’ the middle-aged woman said. ‘I hope this dinner doesn’t take too long, I don’t like to leave my elephant.’ Helen must have noticed the confusion on Ruth’s face. ‘I’m his zoo keeper. Elephants are very intelligent animals. Snaffles lost his mother. He’s attached himself to me.’

  When the steward placed Ruth’s plate in front of her, the most delicious smell greeted her nostrils. Meat. She salivated guiltily thinking of the animals she’d seen earlier. Until last night nearly everything she’d eaten had come out of a can. She cut into the meat and took a bite, not recognising the gamey flavour. ‘Jack? I just met the zookeeper. Does Helen realise what’s going to happen to the animals you rescued today? I ask because she seems very attached to her elephant.’

  ‘I met Snaffles. Young and chunky.’ Jack speared a large piece of meat and put it in his mouth. ‘Yum. Delicious. Eat up, Ruth. Before it gets cold.’

  Ruth looked around the Mess. All the men were focused on their meal. It had been a long time since anyone had enjoyed meat and the plates were heaped full. These big, fighting men needed red meat to stay in peak condition. She leaned in close to Jack so no one could hear. ‘We’re not eating him, are we?’

  Jack put his knife and fork down. ‘What kind of man do you think I am? Helen spent two months in a zoo cage, only leaving and dodging braindeads to find feed. She nearly starved to death herself. We’re going to house Snaffles on Rawson oval. Helen will set up a stall for him in the hut next to the cricket stadium. She’s asked if I could set up a bed in the bar at the stadium for her because she doesn’t want to leave him.’

  Ruth narrowed her eyes thinking it out. ‘Are you going to give Helen out as a prize after dinner like you did with us? I noticed she looks to be around forty.’

  Jack’s gaze slid over to Helen. ‘Drop it, Ruth.’

&nb
sp; ‘I hear you mentioning my name,’ Helen said. She had a direct gaze, her grey eyes sunken in her face. Her brown hair was stuck to her scalp and frizzy at the ends, her face tinged with fatigue.

  Ruth took a sip of her wine to clear her throat. ‘Things are not quite as they seem here. You see, Helen, Jack has a system. It shocked me, so I thought I’d warn you about it, so you’re prepared. You see that slab of beer over there on the table, and that snazzy looking gun?’

  ‘Ruth. Just drop it, will you?’ Jack put his hand on hers and squeezed it warningly. ‘Helen has enough to worry about what with looking after all the animals. We only found her and one other male keeper alive and he was on the brink of starvation.’

  Ruth stared down pointedly at her arm, pushed his hand off hers and looked back over to Helen. ‘I’m sorry, Helen. Jack doesn’t like me to talk about his misogyny. Tell me, has Jack given you your bite check yet?’

  ‘Leave it, Ruth.’ Jack’s voice came out as a growl.

  Armstrong smiled and kept eating, keeping his gaze on his plate.

  ‘I wasn’t bitten. Came close a few times,’ Helen said. ‘Lotta growling braindeads kept me trapped wanting to eat me.’

  Ruth cast Jack a look. ‘Believe me, Helen, I know just how that feels.’

  ‘You do the bite checks now, Ruth. You can check Helen after dinner,’ Jack said.

  ‘You mean you didn’t strap Helen to a bed, take her clothes off and inspect every inch of her skin?’ Ruth asked Jack.

  ‘You do that to women, Jack?’ Helen lifted her eyebrows assessing him. ‘Seems kind of kinky to me. Is that some sort of naval hazing thing?’

  Armstrong chuckled.

  Jack flashed a warning glance at Ruth, his shoulders had hunched and he appeared distinctly uncomfortable. ‘It’s purely procedural, Helen. We check all newcomers so we don’t put our men at risk.’