Plague War (Book 3): Retaliation

by Hodge, Alister

  ‘This is an enlistment form for the Australian Army, sir. On signing, you are committed to no less than five years service,’ said Mark, his voice low but clear. The judge nodded briskly at his words and reached for a pen, like he wanted to get the task completed before his mind changed.

  Mark gently put a hand on top of the page just as the judge was about to sign. ‘Sir, I’m happy to accept your signature. But before you do, can I ask why?’

  The judge sat up straighter and met Mark’s eye for the first time, his jaw clenching with irritation at the question. ‘Don’t skirt around the edges, Lieutenant. You mean to ask why would a person coming from my background of privilege give it all away for a high chance of death? After all, no one’s going to force me to enlist and I could leave it to others, yes?’

  Mark did not look away, merely shrugged at his words. ‘I guess that nails it. But it still doesn’t give me an answer.’

  ‘As an officer, you no doubt already know it,’ said the judge. ‘Would you ask your soldiers to face a danger you wouldn’t be willing to risk yourself?’

  Mark shook his head. ‘Of course not. How could I expect my men to follow me if that was the case?’

  ‘Well you have your answer right there. The leaders of this state have projected a willingness to depend on others to secure their freedom. That has to change. Australia needs Tasmanians to join the struggle, and I’ll be damned if I ask them to risk something that I wouldn’t,’ said the judge. He glanced over his shoulder, seeming to realise for the first time that he had a crowd straining for every word. He looked back at Mark and picked up the pen again. ‘As it seems I’ve managed to draw attention to the recruitment tables, Lieutenant, I’d appreciate if you’d let me sign before my nerve falters.’

  Mark withdrew his hand, allowing the judge to sign his name without further hassle. ‘Welcome to the army, Sir. You have a few hours at your disposal, but will be expected at the Hobart barracks by 3PM. Any questions?’

  The judge shook his head in the negative, silently excusing himself. After giving the man a few moments to leave, Mark picked up his signed sheet and stood holding it above his head for all to see. The judge had provided him with an opportunity that he wasn’t about to waste.

  ‘Have a look at this paper,’ shouted Mark, his voice easily reaching all parts of the assembled crowd as he punched the form into the air. ‘Here is proof that times have changed. You heard his reasons for enlisting, and saw him follow through on his word. Who is willing to join that brave man to defend the safety of your family and the rest of the country?’

  For a few moments, not a person moved. Suddenly a young woman stepped forward, taking the seat recently emptied by the judge.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ she said in a quiet voice, her hand shaking as she reached for a pen. Mark sat back down and passed her a form to sign. The woman’s action broke the spell upon the crowd. Volunteers started to take up seats at each of the recruitment tables, lines forming and snaking back into the crowd.

  The rest of Mark’s detachment took up positions at the trestle table, helping all those willing to sign their lives over to the armed forces. Vinh caught his officer’s eye. He didn’t need to say a word, Mark knew exactly what he was thinking. With an army back to full strength and an active supply line to feed them, came something that money couldn’t buy. It brought hope.

  ***

  Mark stood up and pushed his hands into the small of his back, trying to ease the ache that had settled in like an unwanted houseguest. Hours had passed, and they were finally getting to the end of the line-up of volunteers. After the judge’s closing speech had aired on the radio, people had continued to arrive and join the queue. The resulting crowd had been solemn in nature. With so much of the devastation abroad broadcast in high definition to living rooms across the state, there was no doubt regarding the type of danger they would face as soldiers in the ADF.

  Mark found himself affording a grudging respect to the people who signed up. On the mainland there was no choice about fighting. If you wanted to stay alive, you fought. Simple. Joining the army made sense for anyone without a kid depending on them for protection. Rather than fighting on your own with whatever shit weapon you could scrounge, it at least meant having a military grade rifle in your hands and trained soldiers at your back. Here in Tasmania, the equation wasn’t quite so simple. Here people had to consciously turn their back on a safe environment, choosing instead a situation that would in all probability lead to a premature death. And a painful one at that.

  ‘Lieutenant Collins?’

  Mark turned around at his name, tracking the voice back to a court official talking to his Sergeant. Vinh pointed the man toward Mark.

  ‘How can I help?’ asked Mark.

  The man turned toward Mark, holding out a hand for a business-like shake. ‘Lieutenant Collins, I’m from the Office of Public Prosecution. I have an unusual request for you to consider.’

  Mark’s attention was now properly tweaked. ‘And?’

  ‘You had personal contact with one of the Patriot Party members who was sentenced to fifteen years jail earlier today, Chris Finart?’

  Mark’s mouth tightened at the man’s name. ‘Yeah. That prick should have gotten longer for killing an unarmed prisoner.’

  ‘Yes, there was an amount that happened in that raid that, how should I say... was not typically played by the rule book?’ said the Public Prosecutor, with a raised eyebrow. ‘At this point, there has been no formal decision to investigate whether or not there was appropriate opportunity given for surrender before the use of deadly force, but that may change at any time. Also, there are some rumours that your own record may not be squeaky clean in regard to killing an unarmed prisoner of war?’

  Mark felt his stomach squirm uncomfortably at the unsubtle threat.

  ‘I myself have no desire to see such a trial come to light, but that will be dependent on a number of other factors. The Office of Public Prosecution has an opportunity to gain further information regarding members of parliament who colluded with The Patriots. Liam Finart has agreed to disclose this information if his son has the nature of his sentence altered. It seems he didn’t take the news of his son’s defection too well and wants to see him suffer for it.’

  ‘With all due respect I fail to see what that has to do with me,’ said Mark.

  ‘He wants him conscripted to the army, to serve his sentence on the front lines.’

  ‘There’s plenty of people volunteering to do just that. Why should he escape a jail sentence for what others are doing by choice?’ asked Mark.

  ‘You have to understand Finart’s psychology a little better. He doesn’t think this is a favour, he thinks he’s organising a fitting death for his son’s betrayal. My bosses tend to think the outcome will be the same, so aren’t fussed if they avoid the cost of housing and feeding him for the next fifteen years. They’re also of a mind that Chris did the state a favour by killing the mastermind behind the Police headquarters bombing.

  ‘So far, your commander has also agreed in principle, keen for any extra pair of hands to hold a rifle. His agreement however, comes with a proviso stating that any officer tasked with leading him, must know the type of man under their watch. Hence, the logical choice to take on Chris Finart as a Private, is you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trust that prick to protect my back in a fight. What if I don’t want him in my ranks?’

  ‘Then I think the likelihood of a formal investigation may eventuate into your handling of the raid on Patriot Party members, not to mention the Spartan outlaw motorcycle gang. The choice is yours, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Like fuck it’s a choice,’ muttered Mark, turning away with his fists clenched.

  Vinh stepped close to speak. ‘Don’t fight it, Boss. Let the bastard have a chance to die on the mainland. He won’t be given an opportunity to hurt anyone in the platoon.’

  Mark sighed and gave a stiff nod, knowing he had no other choice. He turned back to the public prose
cutor, anger plain on his face at being entrapped. ‘Fine. I’ll play my part, but that bastard won’t be getting any bloody holiday under my command. He’ll experience the same risk as every other soldier.’

  ‘Good,’ said the public prosecutor with a mild smile on his face. ‘I’d expect no less, Lieutenant.’

  Chapter Thirty

  Steph rolled over, changing position on her uncomfortable hospital mattress for the twentieth time. Sleep wouldn’t come. It rarely did these days, not since Cob Hill. Steph didn’t know why she wanted to sleep so badly, because when she did, it was not restful or regenerative. Sleep only brought nightmares, incoherent images of gore and feelings of rage, an anger that burned so hot it could only be sated by violence and blood.

  Steph supposed she wanted to sleep because that was what normal humans did for part of every day. And these days, she didn’t feel normal, or even human for that matter. Ever since she had awoken in the Canberra research facility, monitoring leads stuck over her chest and a myriad of intravenous lines protruding from her arms and neck, she had felt nothing. No fear, no resentment or anger, but more importantly – she could no longer feel humour, joy or love. It was as if she’d been scoured, pulled apart and put back together again minus that one crucial ingredient that made her feel she was a unique human being. She knew her name was Stephanie, knew her history, and could recall her memories and life experiences. But they felt alien, like they belonged to someone else. So, despite the horror that sleep brought, she found herself seeking it out like a self-harmer drawing blood with a knife, wanting to only distract herself from the new reality and to feel something. Anything. Even if it was a feeling so base as rage.

  Giving up, Steph swung her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed herself to sitting. She still slept in a hospital room with a camera in one corner recording her movements twenty-four hours a day, but the intravenous lines and electrodes had been removed for some time now. Well, all except one. She lifted her hand and itched at the dressing that covered the central line sprouting from the right side of her neck. It was still used on a daily basis to draw yet more blood away from her circulating volume; blood for the scientists to test in new ways, to prove or disprove yet another hypothesis. She shrugged at the thought. Better it be a daily blood sample rather than other tissue samples. Her pelvis still ached at the sites where they had taken bone marrow, and she knew from other scars on her body that the scientists’ needles had probed and stolen tissue. Neural tissue and cerebrospinal fluid from her brain, muscle from her thigh, and nerve from her arm. The lack of sensation in her left little finger belying the biopsy damage wrought on her ulnar nerve.

  Standing now in the tracksuit she’d not bothered to remove for bed, Steph commenced a routine of stretches and basic exercises that could be done in the small room. Boredom made days devoid of sleep last an eternity, and the burn of taxed muscles at least distracted her thoughts.

  A pneumatic hiss sounded as the one door to her room slid open. Steph stopped mid set of push-ups, and stood, a prickling of sweat on her forehead the only sign of her exertion as she greeted her visitor. It was Harry.

  ‘You here for more blood?’ she asked in a steady voice. Despite the exercise, her breath rate had not increased, nor her pulse that still plodded along at thirty beats a minute. The alteration to her base metabolism and vitals had become permanent.

  Harry winced at her question and dull tone. ‘No, not this time. After the stocks acquired from you over the past weeks, I think they have enough stored now to support a year’s worth of trials. I’m here to remove that line in your neck, but more importantly, I just wanted to touch base and say hi.’

  Steph’s face didn’t change at his words, remaining robotically blank. She took a seat on the edge of the bed, angling her head to the side to expose the central line for her cousin. Harry pulled on a pair of blue disposable gloves and gently peeled off the clear, occlusive dressing. After clipping out a suture holding the device in place, he got Steph to take a deep breath, then pulled out the line with a firm, continuous motion. A fifteen-centimetre length of tube pulled out of her jugular vein, removing the tube from where it had sat just above her heart in the superior vena cava.

  Harry dumped the line in a yellow clinical waste bin near the bed, applying direct pressure to the remaining wound with his other hand. After a few minutes, he applied an occlusive dressing over the site, ditched his gloves and took a seat next to Steph on the bed.

  ‘I bet you’re ready to escape this place, eh?’

  ‘What, and miss out on the stimulating scenery? You must be kidding,’ said Steph with a sigh.

  Other than the camera mounted in one corner and bed at the centre, the room was devoid of window or feature. For sensory deprivation, few solitary confinement cells would succeed in outdoing what the Centre for Infectious Disease Research had seen fit to house Steph within.

  Harry unconsciously tore a strip of nail off with his teeth, wincing as he ripped into the quick. He pressed the fingertip into his pants leg to stop it bleeding. ‘You know I’ve been arguing to have you moved for a while, yeah?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, I think I’ve had a win in that regard, and convinced them that they no longer need to keep you here. The team has made huge gains in the research project. It’s now at the stage where testing can begin on primates with the drug, and besides, as I said – they’ve got more than enough of your samples stored in cryo to launch a dozen new trials.’

  Steph saw her cousin looking at her expectantly, evidently hoping for some sort of excitement on her part at his news.

  ‘Come on, Steph, this means you’ll be able to head back to Geelong! Mark’s been hammering the department with information requests about you since you got here. Aren’t you excited at the prospect of seeing him and the others from the squad?’

  ‘I know I should be, but that’s the problem. I still don’t feel a god damned thing,’ said Steph in a quiet voice. ‘I’m grateful that the plague’s been neutralised in my body, but I still feel...’ Steph paused, not wanting to distress her cousin with information about how she really felt inside her own head, or the dreams that she had on the occasions she actually achieved sleep. ‘I don’t know, I just feel different.’

  Harry reached up and squeezed her shoulder in an attempt to comfort her. ‘Maybe it’ll be different when you see Mark in person again?’

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Steph had no desire to talk on the topic any further. ‘So, you said primate trials are beginning? Does that mean they think this thing will work as a cure?’ she asked, trying to inject some degree of interest into her voice. She might feel nothing, but it didn’t take away her ability to put on a facade when she thought necessary.

  Harry’s face seemed to relax a little at her effort. ‘I don’t want to jinx them, but early signs are promising. Thanks to the tissue samples and blood you supplied, we’ve identified the way the virus moves along neural pathways and enters nerve cells – and how to block it. We did find one nerve cell with virus in it on one of your samples, but the consensus thought is that it was contaminated on the microscope plate, because the finding hasn’t been replicated on any of your other samples. Nothing ever goes to plan, but if there’s no major hiccup, we may have a medication ready to trial within a few months. There’s a major push from the ADF hierarchy to have something ready for use before the assaults begin against the state capitals.’

  ‘Do you think it will be? Knowing that you won’t end up dead from a minor Carrier bite would be a huge morale boost for the troops,’ Steph said.

  ‘Not to mention the bigger picture implications,’ said Harry. ‘But the army’s rushed out vaccinations and medications to soldiers in the past and it hasn’t worked out so well – remember the poor bastards exposed to a cocktail of drugs before Desert Storm?’

  ‘That was decades ago, surely it wouldn’t happen now?’ said Steph, suddenly wondering for the first time whether others might experience her own changes in the fut
ure. She shut the thought down. Her current state was still better than being dead or a Carrier. People dealt with disabilities all the time, this would just be her particular one with which to cope.

  ‘Probably not, but that’s only because researchers take the job seriously and refuse release of a drug until it’s proven safe.’

  ‘But surely in this climate it’ll end up a risk decision? Is it more risk to give the drug than to not? When the choice is guaranteed death versus possible side effects, I know which one I’d take,’ Steph said.

  ‘Yeah, but Lysan Plague’s only a death sentence if you get bitten,’ Harry countered.

  ‘Tell that to the soldier holding the line, Harry,’ said Steph, her face hard. ‘You tell them that, and see what fucking answer you get.’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  ‘Anything else, Boss?’

  Mark flinched slightly at the honorific. She’d been the one soldier of the platoon to not commonly use it, always calling him by his name unless protocol demanded otherwise. But not anymore.

  ‘No, Sarg, that’s it,’ he said, handing over a list of names detailing the recruits that had been allocated to his platoon. ‘Bring them back here, and we’ll see if they’ve learnt which end of a rifle points at the enemy.’

  Mark watched his ex-girlfriend walk away for a moment, then forced himself to turn and occupy his eyes with something else. He’d taken it hard initially. The harsh spirits his men brewed had been his answer until Vinh had forced him to sober up and accept the situation. Now that the better part of a month had passed, time was making it easier. Somewhat.

  Training of the Tasmanian recruits had been well underway when Steph had returned to Geelong unannounced. Mark had been overjoyed to see her looking fit and hale, but it hadn’t taken long for him to work out that some key part of her had changed. Her speech fit the bill well enough, but the body language didn’t match. The spark that used to light her eye when she met his gaze was gone, leaving him to feel like a laboratory specimen under study. They’d tried for a couple of weeks, until Steph had finally called it off. Mark had thought to dissuade her, but when he met her eyes and saw how utterly cold they’d become, he’d let go without argument. PTSD did strange things to soldiers, and he knew he’d have to settle for being happy that she’d survived.