Plague War (Book 3): Retaliation

by Hodge, Alister

  ‘Nah, let them go. If they wanted to talk, they would have waited. We’re probably going to have to tread lightly to avoid an open confrontation – I think I saw Spartan MC colours on the back of those guys. They don’t tend to play too well with authority.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Steph.

  ‘My dad was a cop when I was a kid. The Spartans had a chapter house located in the catchment area of his station, and they were constant trouble. The cops always struggled to pin much on them, but my father thought they were the devil incarnate. Reckoned they ran drugs and illegal firearms.’

  ‘You think that’s why there’s few Carriers around? If they can fight, surely that’s to our advantage?’ said Vinh.

  Mark shrugged as he switched his attention back to the buildings they passed. ‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough.’

  The place was a ghost town, devoid of movement now that the bikies had fled. Grass grew to knee height through cracks in the pavement. Most of the shops were damaged, windows smashed, and stock removed. A few buildings had been reduced to charred timbers, however, compared to other towns that had faced an outbreak of plague, Cob Hill had fared better than most.

  Mark saw a curtain twitch from the periphery of his vision, and a man’s face disappear. ‘Pull over, I think we’ve found someone.’

  Mark climbed out the back of the vehicle, flanked by Steph and another Private. The five other armoured trucks that made up his platoon pulled to a halt on the street. Mark headed straight for the corner store where he’d seen the movement. A faded sign for ‘The Herald-Sun’ and ‘Streets Ice Cream’ fronted the awning above the footpath. Mark tried the door handle without success, the store was locked.

  Mark rapped his knuckles on the window a few times, then stepped back and waited. After a few minutes when it became obvious they weren’t moving on, the man he’d seen earlier reluctantly appeared and unlocked the door.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked through a crack, eyes furtively dancing about the street behind them as if he was looking for someone else.

  Steph gave Mark a questioning glance at the man’s odd behaviour.

  ‘We’re from the ADF. My name’s Lieutenant Mark Collins, and I’m the commanding officer of these troops,’ he said, indicating the trucks on the road.

  ‘No shit,’ the man muttered. ‘You think I don’t know an army vehicle when I see it? I asked what do you want? Most of the town’s dead, so if you came to help – you’re too fucking late. We already won back our town from those rotting bastards without any help from the government or army. Within the fence, we’re plague free.’

  Mark could hear the Private to his right grumble under his breath at the man’s words, and he found himself grinding his own teeth to prevent snapping out a retort. There were few Australians that had fought as many Carriers as his men. He took a breath before replying, trying to keep the annoyance from his voice. ‘Times have been tough everywhere, Sir, but the army is starting to turn the tide. We’re here to ensure families in the region are safe from roaming Carriers and are able to start getting their farms back on track.’

  The man’s gaze had stopped roving the street behind Mark, and finally met his eye. ‘Better late than never, I guess. Though you might find that some here aren’t so keen for a handout from the Army.’

  Mark decided to change tact. ‘I saw a few men wearing colours of the Spartans outlaw motorcycle club when we entered town. They weren’t too keen on speaking to us and fled before we could approach. Is there a surviving chapter of the club in the area?’

  The man appeared startled by his question and pulled backwards, attempting to shut the door. Mark kicked his boot forward, wedging the entrance open. ‘You can close the door once we’ve finished talking, mate,’ said Mark, his voice starting to betray irritation.

  ‘Look, I don’t know about any motorcycle club,’ he said, his voice starting to climb in pitch. ‘I’m just a shop owner – the last bloody one in town now, I think. Leave me out of any discussions about who’s running the show, all right?’

  ‘Ok, so who’s in charge? I saw the fence that’s been built about the town – it took more than a few people to get that job done. Who’s coordinating efforts between survivors? I need a contact who can introduce me to the different farmers in the area, someone that people trust.’

  A nervous tic pulled at the corner of the man’s eye. ‘There’s no formal leader. If you must talk to someone, start with Joel Tipper. He used to be the town Mayor,’

  ‘Where can I find him?’ asked Mark.

  ‘He’s on Westfriar Road, ten kilometres out of town.’ The man kicked Mark’s boot free from the gap in the door. ‘Now fuck off, and don’t go telling anyone I spoke to you,’ he said, slamming the door shut.

  Mark abandoned further attempts at interaction and stepped back onto the street. No matter how frustrating it was, breaking down doors when they’d just arrived in town wasn’t going to win his troops any friends or trust.

  Vinh swung open the back door to the armoured vehicle as the trio walked back. ‘What’s the go? Any useful info?’

  Mark allowed Steph and the other Private to climb in first. ‘Yeah, we got a person to touch base with – the previous mayor who lives out of town. But something’s not right here, Vinny. Doesn’t make any sense that they’ve emptied the town of plague and built a defensive perimeter – and yet all the survivors seem to have bugged out.’

  ‘Who gives a shit? As long as we don’t have to clear every house – I’m bloody happy,’ said Vinh. ‘Now which direction are we heading to find this mayor?’

  Chapter Nine

  Harry glanced at his watch and swore under his breath as he saw the time. He was supposed to be outside ten minutes ago to meet Veronica. She’d called half an hour earlier, excited about a breakthrough she’d had at the lab, but had refused to give any details over the phone. He scribbled a last sentence in his patient’s record before dumping the file in a plastic tub. The notes could wait, unlike the recently deceased patient they concerned.

  Harry stood up from the desk, walked back over to his latest failure and helped the nurse bag the corpse before rigor mortis kicked in. The nurse bent the patient’s leg, then with her other hand on its shoulder, used the flexed knee as a lever and rolled the patient towards herself. Harry stuffed the blue tarp like material of the open bag under the body, trying to ignore the damp, waxy sensation of the corpse’s skin under hand.

  With bag underneath, the nurse allowed the body to roll back again. Sightless brown eyes of a middle-aged man stared up at the ceiling. A light shiver worked up Harry’s back as he helped to pull the edges of the bag around the patient so the zipper could be drawn, hiding the deceased from sight. There was something unsettling about being around a human body devoid of life. Once the soul abandoned the flesh, muscles relaxed, fluids pooled, and features changed. What had once been a human became nothing more than a waxen mask, a mockery of the person’s appearance in life. It was probably the reason open coffin funerals helped a family grieve. Once you saw the altered face of your loved one and felt their cold skin under hand, the reality of their departure became inarguable. They were gone, never to return. Well, until recently at least. The plague had fucked up that sweet deal for way too many people.

  Harry zipped the bag shut over the deceased’s face, and then flicked his plastic gloves in the bin on the way out. ‘I’m going to grab some lunch, yeah? Be back in half an hour.’

  Harry shielded his eyes from the glare as he stepped outside. Although it was only mid-morning, the sun already had some bite. The sky overhead was vivid blue, a colour that people prior to the industrial revolution probably took for granted, and yet for anyone that had grown up in a city’s smog, was something rarely seen. There were few active factories or cars these days, and despite the trauma destroying the human species, Harry couldn’t help but think the planet as a whole was already showing signs of benefit from Homo Sapiens being knocked down a peg or five.
r />   ‘Geez, you look like you’ve come from a funeral,’ said Veronica, a friendly teasing note to her voice.

  Harry looked toward her voice and found her sitting on a bench outside the Emergency Department. Her expression altered as she saw Harry’s response to her words.

  ‘Shit. Bit too close to the mark, was I?’

  Harry nodded. ‘Yeah, another one kicked the bucket an hour ago. The guy was only in his forties; survived the plague only to die from a shitty pyelonephritis. We’ve got nothing left to treat even the simple stuff. It’s like we’re doing medicine in the bloody 1800’s.’

  Veronica said nothing, allowing him to vent. There was no solution to the problem, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating.

  Harry sighed. ‘Sorry, I’ll shake it off. That’s my bitching for the day done, I swear.’

  ‘No skin off my nose,’ she said. ‘I find it just as shit as you do when I’m on shift there.’ Veronica stood up and grabbed his hand. ‘Come on, let’s go for a walk and forget the Emergency for a while.’

  Harry smiled for the first time that morning, allowing himself to be tugged along. He hadn’t seen Veronica like this for a while and couldn’t help but think it suited her. A few weeks earlier, she’d turned up at his house with a couple of wine bottles to share that she’d been gifted from a patient’s family. Neither had the tolerance for alcohol they once did, and as inhibitions were blunted with every glass, they’d ended up spending the night. But competing demands of the hospital and research load, combined with grief for her lost family had prevented any further developments. It wasn’t that he was averse to the idea, Harry just didn’t think it was something fair to ask of her when at times she seemed to be only just functioning. But maybe that was a bit harsh. If you were able to function at all these days– surely, you’d proved yourself to be extraordinarily resilient?

  Harry shook his head clear of his musing and focused instead on the feel of her warm fingers entwined about his own. So much nicer than the greasy cold skin of his dead patient, or the Carriers they toiled over to discover a cure. So much more... Alive.

  The two walked down Swanston St. toward the bay and Eastern Beach. As he walked in the sun, Harry felt the tired ache in his chest lessen with each step as he created greater space between the hospital and his latest perceived failure. After five minutes, the pair reached the edge of parkland sloping down toward the beach. Cyclone wire fencing had been erected along the foreshore, preventing stray Carriers emerging from the water right into the heart of town.

  Harry glanced back over his shoulder at the grand houses on the other side of the street. Despite the view, each lay abandoned and there was little surprise at that. Delivered by vagaries of the tide, the water was the biggest source of Infected to Geelong these days and the occasional one still got past the fencing. No one wanted to wake up to a Carrier munching on their arm, no matter how pretty the view or luxurious the house.

  ‘So, what’s the big news that couldn’t be discussed over the phone?’ asked Harry, his fingers now hooked through links of the fence as he stared across the bay to the abandoned Shell Refinery on the far shore.

  ‘I think I may have achieved a breakthrough,’ said Veronica.

  Harry’s breath caught and he stared straight at her. ‘What sort?’ he asked, forcing down his excitement. They’d had zero luck so far, it didn’t make any sense for that to change overnight.

  ‘I think I may have worked out how the virus keeps the body active after death.’

  Harry said nothing, waiting for her to elaborate.

  ‘The other night I was lying awake for hours. I started thinking on what you said about attacking the problem of the virus from a different direction by concentrating on blocking its action, rather than trying to kill the actual virus itself. That made me start to wonder what parts of the cell would be crucial to get it up and working again? And then it hit me – it has to be making energy.’

  Harry raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not following you. We agree that the Carrier’s dead, there’s no heart beating in there. Why would it need energy?’

  ‘I thought the same thing initially, but then realised something had to be enabling muscles to contract otherwise they wouldn’t be able to stand and attack us. So, I looked into the cell taken from an active Carrier, rather than those that we’ve euthanised already.’

  ‘And?’ asked Harry.

  ‘The mitochondria of the cell were working again, albeit abnormally slowly, but they must be producing energy of a sort for the cell. And the other thing – the infected mitochondria were filled with Lysan Plague virus.’

  Harry’s mind reeled at the news. He’d just taken for granted the entire cell was dead, but it made sense when shoved right in his face. Mitochondria were an organelle found within a cell that worked like a factory, converting food and oxygen into a useable fuel for the entire cell. Without them the cell couldn’t produce enough energy to function.

  ‘My theory is that once the virus penetrates the organelle wall of the mitochondria, it somehow reactivates it to start producing energy again. Maybe if we can find what protein channel the virus uses for gaining access, we could stop the disease in its tracks.’

  Harry’s initial excitement started to wane as he thought further on the problem. ‘It might stop them from re-animating, but without an active immune response from the body to the virus itself – the victim will still die from a plague induced sepsis.’

  Veronica’s brow furrowed at his dismissal and she pulled back from Harry. ‘For fucks sake, you were the one touting this line of investigation just the other week. Are you cutting me down just because you didn’t come up with the goddamn solution?’

  ‘No, that’s not it at all. I still believe it’s important – but it will be only part of the entire picture. We still need an immune system that recognises the plague virus as soon as it enters the body, so that the body can launch an all-out attack to kill the virus before it multiplies past the point of return. We still need a vaccine of some sort.’

  ‘Well I think you’re wrong, Harry. If we can block the virus’ access to the parts of a cell that matter – I think that will make the virus null and void. Who gives a shit if you have the virus in you if it can’t do anything? In the current state of the world – that’s a cure that I’d accept,’ she said. ‘Surely it’s at least worth investigating?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course it is. You’re definitely on to something – we just need to determine how much impact it’ll have on an infected subject.’

  ‘So, you’ll help me?’ asked Veronica, eyebrows raised in question.

  ‘Give me a break. As if I was ever going to say no.’

  A scream sounded from further down the slope at the beach, freezing the smile on Harry’s face. Both turned to investigate, eyes locking on a shambling figure headed directly at them.

  ‘It must have come out of the bay while we were talking,’ said Harry as he lifted his scrubs top to expose a holstered pistol. Few people who planned on remaining alive walked an open street without a weapon at hand, and Harry was no different. He pulled free his Glock, chambered a round and then waited with the pistol hanging at his side.

  ‘Shouldn’t we just call it in for a formal patrol to deal with?’ suggested Veronica.

  ‘And what if it manages to find a weak spot in the fence in the meantime?’ said Harry. ‘No, we found it, therefore it’s our responsibility to put the bloody thing down. It won’t take long.’

  Veronica nodded, stepping back to give him some room. Harry squared up, concentrating on slowing his breathing as he watched the corpse approach.

  The creature looked like it had been in the water for an extended time. A few remnants of rotted cloth were slimed onto its skin. It had been an obese man in his sixties before the Lysan Plague took hold. Where a protruding beer belly had once sat, was now just a flaccid apron of skin that hung down over the shrivelled remains of his groin. Water dripped from matted hair that had a seaweed tinge of
green. The skin and eye on the left side of his face had been nibbled away by fish, leaving an empty socket that oozed a pink sludge over the bare cheekbone. The remaining eye was fixed on Harry as its legs started to pump faster in agitation to attack.

  Harry waited until it was no more than a few metres away, then placed the tip of the pistol through the fence and lined up the ghoul. A single shot punctured its forehead, flipping the Carrier’s skull back like it had been hit by a cricket bat. Harry watched it slide down the slope in a jumble of limbs until it came to an untidy rest. Knowing it wouldn’t move again, he holstered the Glock and turned back to Veronica.

  ‘So, where were we again?’ asked Harry, the tight expression on his face failing to match the nonchalance of his voice.

  Chapter Ten

  Chris bunched his hands into fists and shoved them deep into his pockets as he walked. A sheathed knife was attached to his belt, its presence given away by an unnatural lump beneath his thin jacket. Seeing a stone on the road ahead, he kicked it hard into the back of a parked sedan. The stone sparked on the metal in the dark, leaving an indentation of his anger.

  He was fuming from what he’d seen. Chris had tried to stay away from Julie since their fight, wanting to distance himself in the lead up to her murder. But tonight, he hadn’t been able to help himself. With barely a conscious thought, he’d found himself hiding in the garden outside her house in the dark, watching as she walked around inside. Julie still hadn’t fixed her vertical blinds as yet, so he could see clearly enough between some of the gaps with the lights on behind.

  When she’d gone into the bedroom and changed into some lingerie, he’d watched mesmerized with one hand shoved down his pants, the other clutching his knife. And then it had all gone wrong. The fucking police officer, Dane, had turned up. Julie had let him in and taken Dane straight to the bedroom, ripping his clothes off as they went. Naked, they’d hit the bed and Chris had forced himself to leave before rage overcame reason a second time. How he would have loved to smash his way in and kill them both then and there, to answer the calling that begged him to satisfy warped pride and desire through blood and torture. But not here and now when he would be the prime suspect. His current need for violence would have to be met elsewhere.