End Times V: Kingdom of Hell

by Shane Carrow

  “Well, you need to ask Aaron to find out how long until RAAF Base Wagga can dispatch a chopper to extract us,” Blake said.

  So I went and sat in another corner of the pub, closed my eyes, and called Aaron. Filled him in on what had happened – the firefight at the airstrip, bringing D’Costa’s chopper down. We’re moving south but it’s going to be dangerous territory, I said. When can you send a chopper?

  I can’t give you a definite answer on that, Aaron said. You’re too close to New England for now. Captain Tobias has been talking to RAAF Base Wagga. They’re mostly focused on trying to make contact with the Globemaster survivors holed up in that observatory. They’re not far from you, actually. If you could link up with them...

  Why are people always on about linking up with them? I said. Aren’t they surrounded by an enormous horde of zombies?

  We’re not sure, Aaron said. They’re not in direct contact… look, Wagga’s been having its own problems. We were trying to bring some of their civilians up here, where it’s safer, and to get them out from under the Air Force’s feet, and there were some riots about who could go and who had to stay. And remember, they have their own zombies banging at the fences. Plus we had an outbreak here three days ago.

  What? I said. Are you fucking kidding me? A zombie outbreak? In Jagungal?

  Yeah, Aaron said. The Endeavour detected it as soon as it happened, but it still took us by surprise, and we lost two more people. Scared the shit out of us.

  Jesus. Why didn’t you tell me about this?

  You haven’t exactly been keeping in touch, Aaron said testily.

  That was true. It had been at least three or four days since I’d last called him. How the hell did it happen?

  He sent me the mental equivalent of a shrug. A suicide. A newly-arrived refugee. Who knows what they’ve been through? We have a lot of people here now, more coming in every day. Maybe seven or eight hundred people now? Refugees, survivors, whatever you want to call them. Christmas Island is directing a lot of the scattered groups of loyal soldiers up to us, but they’re nothing compared to the civilians we keep getting. People know about this place now. It’s a safe haven.

  Not too fucking safe if you’re having outbreaks, I said. Get that sorted.

  Uh-huh, Aaron said dryly. I’ll be sure to pass that on to Tobias. Listen, I’ll talk to him about organising an extraction, but he doesn’t have total power. It’s up to RAAF Base Wagga and Christmas Island. Just keep heading south for now. And good luck.

  I relayed the news to Blake while I finished my coffee. “For Christ’s sake,” Blake said. “We’re maybe eight hundred kilometres from Wagga Wagga. Fly a Black Hawk without ordinance, strip some seats out, carry extra fuel tanks – that’s well within range. Why the hell are they dragging their feet on this?”

  “Don’t shoot the messenger,” I said. “And Aaron said it’s up to Wagga and Christmas Island, not Captain Tobias. They think we’re still too close to New England.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to risk one after what we did to the Globemaster,” Rahvi grinned, sipping his coffee.

  Blake frowned at him. “This is serious. What are we supposed to take from this? The nuke is supposed to be issue number one. It’s our only shot at taking out Ballarat. And all of a sudden they can’t spare a chopper to bring the PAL codes down?”

  “Well, yeah, Aaron said they were more focused on the nuke itself,” I said. “No contact with the crew – they didn’t even know it was at this observatory place until I told him, and we only heard it from that Army Intelligence guy at the mill.”

  “I hope you made that clear,” Rahvi said. “That it was just on the say-so of someone in New England. He could have been lying.”

  “We did know it was near Wollemi National Park, though,” Blake said. “How does New England know that, is what I’d like to know.”

  “Well, anyway,” I said. “That’s their priority. Or maybe they want to do a joint pickup, two birds with one stone. Our orders are just to keep heading south for now.”

  “Christ,” Blake said. “Fucking Defence. We’re going to end up walking back to base on our own, I know it. This is going to be fucking Helmand province all over again…”

  “What?” I said.

  “Never mind,” Blake said. “I want you talking to Aaron every day from now on, understood? Light a fire under his ass, make him pester the hell out of RAAF Base Wagga.” He jabbed a finger at the map. “In the meantime, we keep moving. Take it one day at a time, one town at a time. Next stop’s Nundle, should be about thirty minutes south. Let’s get moving. Rahvi, pack the ute. Matt, go wake up the others.”

  Half an hour later, here we are. Leaving Woolomin was no big deal – still quiet as a graveyard, no swarms of undead New English or vengeful Commandos lying in wait for us to emerge from the pub. I’m riding shotgun, and Rahvi’s driving. Blake and Cavalli are in the tray, while the other three are squeezed into the back seat. Writing this is a bitch with all the windows broken from the gunfight at the airport, and the pages flapping around, but I don’t have much else to do. Takes my mind off what might be waiting for us further south, anyway. New England was a predictable beast. But we have no idea what to expect from a country that’s been plunged into post-apocalyptic darkness for the past ten months.

  The engine’s not sounding too happy. I suppose she’s doing pretty well considering how many bullets she took – a Toyota Hilux is meant to be pretty much indestructible, but that was a nasty gunfight. We’ll probably try to find another vehicle in Nundle, assuming we can. Given our luck the town will be swarming with thousands of zombies and all four tyres will blow out simultaneously as soon as we arrive.

  October 10

  1.00am

  We arrived in Nundle half an hour after leaving Woolomin, the highway winding south through forested mountains with the occasional valley of paddocks, a sudden flash of sparkling blue water as a huge lake swept past on our right. The road was deserted. Now and then we’d see an overturned car in a ditch, or a skeleton lying on the side of the road – but they were old relics from the fall, not from New England’s collapse. Whatever was happening back there hadn’t quite spread beyond the borders yet. At one point we stopped to inspect a pair of abandoned Army trucks, a long-forgotten roadblock, but they’d been thoroughly looted a long time ago.

  Nundle may as well have been a clone of Woolomin. A few clapboard houses, a church, a 19th century pub. A meandering creek drifted through the town centre and a patchwork of overgrown fields and empty paddocks surrounded it on all sides. It was completely deserted, the buildings run-down and the streets and carparks devoid of vehicles. We were still in the orbit of New England, luring survivors away through the autumn and winter. “Most places we find are going to be deserted for a while yet,” Zhou speculated.

  “Not for long,” Cavalli said.

  I wondered how far ahead we were of the refugee surge, the inevitable explosion of survivors fleeing the war in New England in every direction of the compass.

  The Hilux was gasping her last breaths as we rolled along the main street, an uninspiring two-lane road with a handful of shops. Rahvi pulled us up by a petrol station and stopped the car. The coughing and spluttering died, leaving only a few wisps of steam and smoke, and silence dropped down over the town once more.

  We undid our seatbelts and opened the doors, but Blake was already jumping down from the ute’s tray and growling at us. “Doors shut. Cavalli, Rahvi, with me. The rest of you wait here.”

  When they were gone, I shuffled over behind the wheel and tried to gun the engine. As feared, it made nothing but whining noises, struggling and failing to turn over. “Fucking great,” I said. “Better hope this place is empty after all.”

  “It will be,” Zhou said from the back seat. “A zombie or two, maybe, but that’ll be it.”

  Not even that. Blake, Rahvi and Cavalli returned to the car after less than ten minutes. “All right,” Blake said. “This place seems quiet, but don�
�t let your guard down. I want weapons out at all times. We’re splitting into two groups. Me, Matt, Zhou and Jess will search the north half of town; Rahvi, Cavalli, and Jones will search the south half. We’re looking for a vehicle. A big one, but if you can’t find that, we may have to split into two cars. Keep an eye out for anything else useful as well.” He handed one of the CB radios from the Hilux to Rahvi, and clipped the other to his belt. “Any comms failure whatsoever, you head back here straight away. Got it?”

  Rahvi nodded, and headed off south down the main strip with Jones and Cavalli. Blake led the rest of us north.

  It was a miniscule town, the kind that only grows to provide a bare minimum of services to a bunch of farmers. We passed a primary school, windows all broken and swing sets twisting gently in the breeze. A newsagent with the security shutter down. A general store, thoroughly looted and ransacked, crumbs of broken glass still scattered across the footpath outside. We managed to find a few bottles of Mt Franklin that had rolled under a display case, and a few cans of warm Coke. A derelict police cruiser yielded a couple of 9mm bullets that Blake inspected carefully and then discarded, saying they were corroded. A small butcher’s shop had a first aid kit mounted on the wall that we took down and brought with us.

  There were bits and pieces all over the town like that. But not what we needed, which was a car.

  We found a Ford Focus sitting in a driveway that we chalked up as a maybe. A Mitsubishi Lancer in the carpark of the primary school. A Toyota Camry just sitting on the side of the road, all four tyres flat. Not what we really wanted, which was a ute or a four-wheel drive. Rahvi gave us regular dispatches from the south end, reporting equally dismal findings. The people of Nundle had fled to New England long ago, taking nearly all their cars with them.

  Then we found a grubby white Holden Crewman. It was sitting on an unpaved side road at the edge of town, lined with poplar trees. We approached it slowly, a house coming into view through the foliage. Quite a large house, with overgrown acreage around it.

  Blake inspected the car and then glanced at the house. “Matt, come with me,” he said. “Zhou, Jess, you two stay here.”

  I didn’t like the idea of splitting up. I considered saying something, but Blake was already heading up the drive towards the house. I turned to Jess, and thought about saying something reassuring. But I knew she’d just roll her eyes, so instead I just turned back towards the house and followed Blake.

  He tried the front door, which was unlocked. We stepped inside with our Steyrs out, scanning the corners, muddy Army boots stepping onto clean carpet. The curtains were drawn, and the house smelt of must and stale air – and something worse.

  Blake motioned for me to cover him as he stepped into the kitchen and dining area. There was a stink here, but it wasn’t what I’d feared. Just a garbage bag in an open bin, rotting with old scraps of meat and vegetables, a breeding ground for maggots. I wrinkled my noise as Blake stepped forward into the kitchen and looked at the fridge. Photographs of a family. A young couple and a toddler, a little girl. Christmas shots with relatives, a day at the public swimming pool.

  Aside from the barely audible squirming of the maggots, the house was silent.

  “What do you think happened to them?” I whispered, frightened to break the silence. “Why’s their car still here?”

  Blake shrugged. “Maybe they left with someone else,” he said in low tones. “Maybe they had two, and went to New England in the other. Who knows? But I reckon these are the keys.” He picked them up from a hand-carved rack of pegs by the fridge, and pocketed them with a jingle.

  We left the house slowly, covering each other, nerves on edge and expecting a zombie to burst out at any moment. Nothing happened. We emerged back into the sunlight to find Jess and Zhou still standing by the Holden, keeping a watchful eye on the road back to town.

  “Let’s just give this a try first,” Blake said, unlocking the driver’s door and sitting behind the wheel. “Battery’s probably... yep, dead. All right.” He popped the bonnet open and went to peer inside. “Could be a few problems here, actually...”

  The ute had been sitting out there in the elements for half a year, including through winter. That obviously wasn’t good for it, but we decided to push it back down to the garage attached to the petrol station to tinker with it and see if we could get it running. It was better than cramming ourselves into hatchbacks and sedans for the long haul south. Jess sat behind the driver’s seat and steered while rest of us pushed it down the main drag.

  Rows and rows of empty windows watched us go. We were obvious, out in the open. I wondered at the time if there was anybody there watching us, peering through their curtains, too scared to come out and approach us. It was a small town, a village really, but there were still dozens of buildings and hundreds of places to hide.

  When we got back to the garage, the other three were waiting for us. We parked the Holden, guzzled some water, and sat around discussing the problems. The fuel in the tank would be spoilt by now, but we could siphon what we had out of the Toyota. The battery was dead, but the Toyota was even deader, so we couldn’t jump start it. Plus the tyres were pretty flat, it needed some new oil, and a couple of other minor engine problems. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed, but it would take a few hours. Blake split us into teams again, keeping me and Rahvi and himself at the car, and the other four off to search the local stores for supplies.

  It felt good to spend a few hours working with the car. I was never really sure what I wanted to do with my life, but Mech Workshop was the only subject I really enjoyed at all in school. I just liked working with my hands, fiddling with engines, fixing stuff and making things tick. And I had a good teacher, compared to some of my other classes. I guess if I knew everything I did now, if I could jump back to my old life again, I’d join the Army. Maybe join the SAS one day. But I still like mucking about with engines. I guess I could have joined the Engineer Corps or something.

  I suppose that morning, spending a few hours working on a car with Blake and Rahvi, is the last good memory I’m going to have for a while.

  The others returned around noon with a few jerry cans of water and some canned food they’d found in the nooks and crannies of various houses. Not a single zombie, nor any remaining residents. They didn’t go in every building. I thought about that later, wracking my brains over it. Maybe he was in one of the buildings we didn’t explore. Or maybe he was just good at hiding. Or maybe he hadn’t even arrived at that point.

  No point thinking about it now. What’s done is done

  At about three o’clock, we finally managed to get the Holden running again, though it needed a push-start. Cavalli sat behind the wheel with Jess in the passenger seat while the rest of us put palms to the tray and pushed. Eventually, about fifty metres down the main street, the engine begrudgingly roared to life. Cavalli gave it a few revs to keep it going, while the rest of us piled in.

  “Hang on,” Blake said. “We left a few things in the garage. Reverse her a bit. Keep the revs up!”

  We jumped onto the sides of the ute and gripped the roof rack as Cavalli took her back along the street to the garage. The rumbling engine seemed disproportionately loud after a whole day spent in the ghostly town. I scanned the windows and gardens again, but saw nothing.

  We loaded the last few supplies into the ute’s tray. Rahvi and I played scissors paper rock to see who’d be riding in the tray with the sarge, and I lost. The other three squeezed into the backseat while I clambered up into the tray. Blake was the last one to come down from the garage, holding a backpack full of tinned goods. He slung it into the tray beside me, and was climbing up over the back himself when the sharp crack of gunshot rang out and he toppled forward in a spray of blood.

  I stared at him with my mouth agape. He was lying in the tray, not moving. The engine idled away, a gentle rumble, the others not even realising what had happened. He was twisted in an awkward little fall, arms stuck beneath him, face shoved into the cr
ook of his elbow.

  About two seconds later the realisation hit me suddenly, like being splashed in the face with ice cold water. I screamed out and shot forward towards him. That saved my life – as I ducked down to him, about to turn him over, shake him awake, try to resuscitate him, another bullet shrieked through the air where my head had been and shattered the rear windscreen.

  That got their attention. The ute’s cab was suddenly filled with shouts and screams, and Cavalli kicked the engine into gear and tore off down the road. I lost my balance and tumbled over next to Blake, putting my hand down in warm, sticky blood. I grabbed his shoulder and turned him over to face me, ignoring the lurching of the ute and the sound of Jess screaming inside the cab and even the third gunshot that whistled out and came so close to my cheek I could feel it.

  I rolled Blake over onto his back, looked down at him and immediately felt sick. The bullet had hit him in the back of his neck and come out through his throat, a violent red blossom, tearing right through his major arteries. His face was blank and he wasn’t breathing. It must have severed his spinal cord or his brain stem or something, too. He’d been dead the second the bullet tore through him.

  I glanced back at the town just before Cavalli took a sharp right turn onto the highway that would take us deeper into the mountains. One last glimpse. Nundle looked just the same as it had all day – perfectly still, perfectly quiet. Not a soul in sight.

  Except somebody had been there. A sniper. Lurking, waiting, watching us – for how long? Why wait until we were nearly ready to go?

  I sat there numbly in the back of the ute, one hand holding side of the tray and the other cupping the back of Blake’s head, my hand wet and warm with his blood. I realise now that I was in shock. Completely numb, completely horrified, the solid foundation of my world crumbling to dust. Sergeant Blake was dead. Just like that.