End Times Box Set [Books 1-6]

by Carrow, Shane

  Simon was still lying in his back as I loomed over him, tears in my eyes. He glanced off to his right. “Zombie’s coming,” he said.

  It was shambling across the road towards us, an old one, so rotted and dishevelled as to be almost unrecognisable. “Give me your rifle,” I said, snatching his Steyr. I stalked across the blacktop looking forward to stabbing something. I wasn’t really pissed off at Simon, I was pissed off at Matt – and I was pissed off at myself for letting it affect me so much.

  The zombie let out a horrible death rattle as I approached, a weak and withered hunting call. It must have been one of the very first victims, way back in January, because it was so badly decomposed it was struggling to stay on its feet. The wind was in my favour but I could still smell it at twenty paces. Not for the first time, I wondered how long it would take for a zombie to decompose to the point of immobility. Which was another way of asking how long until, as the Endeavour put it, the machines decided to end their experiment and destroy the planet entirely.

  I shoved the Steyr’s bayonet into its eye socket, felt the blade smash through the back of a mouldy skull, and watched as it flopped onto the bitumen like the piece of rotting meat it was. Who had it been? Staffer, wonk, public servant? It was so far gone I couldn’t even tell if it had been a man or a woman.

  There was a shout from back at the tunnel entrance. I whirled around, instinctively bringing the Steyr up to my cheek, sighting along the scope. But there was no attack, no danger. I caught a glimpse of Jonas leaning over with his hands at his face before he was surrounded by soldiers.

  Simon was scrambling to his feet as I sprinted past him, and we arrived there at the same time. “What happened?” I asked. I could hear gunfire, now, far and distant – echoing volleys from down in the tunnel.

  Jonas had his hands up to his nose, and spat the words out with muffled sinuses full of blood. “Fucking Matt fucking hit me!”

  “What?” I asked. “Where is...”

  The situation played out in my mind even as Jonas tried to explain through a broken nose. Matt had heard gunfire from below; had tried to go down into the tunnels; Jonas had tried to stop him; Matt had hit him in the nose with his gun.

  I started sprinting back down the tunnels, ignoring the shouts behind me, the Steyr in my right hand, the smooth cold stone walls running along my left hand. It was pitch black, but I was reversing the directions I’d taken before in my head. 421 steps this way, 18 steps this way... then had it been left or right?

  I hesitated at an intersection, the mirror image backtracking confusing me for a moment, which was long enough for Simon to catch up to me. A few other soldiers were behind him, and one of them had a flashlight. “What the fuck are you doing?” Simon barked.

  “Shhh,” I said, listening. A moment later I heard the unmistakeable clatter of gunfire echoing down the tunnels towards us, and sprinted after it.

  They had no choice but to follow. I didn’t need to count in my head anymore, because the gunfire was my guide. I tripped once, and as I staggered up to my feet I turned back to see that I’d tripped on a body. It wasn’t the first. Two that I stepped over were soldiers from Jagungal whose faces I recognised from outside.

  The rest were kids.

  Suddenly I could see the light reflecting through the tunnels, and turned a corner to find myself in the server room again. It was a chaotic scene – more bodies on the ground, blood sprayed everywhere, the baleful light of electric lamps, a zombie child stumbling to its feet only to be put down with a bayonet by one of my own entourage. And there, up against the corner, near the desk where that little bastard Jared had laid his ultimatum down to me, was a showdown. Sergeant Berkovitz’s group, rifle sights at their eyeballs, their own bodies blocking my view of whatever it was they were staring down. Matt stood alongside them. I pushed forward to get a view.

  Something had made me think it would be Tobias, locked in this inevitable hostage situation, but it wasn’t. And the other side of it wasn’t even Jared, the redhead teenager who’d been running the show down here. It was Private Librizzi, with some 11- or 12-year-old kid I didn’t recognise holding a gun to his head. Librizzi had his hands in the air and his eyes squeezed shut. The kid was sobbing and crying uncontrollably.

  “Put the gun down,” Sergeant Berkovitz said, as calmly as he could. “Put the gun down, mate, we don’t want to hurt you, it’ll be alright, we’ll be...”

  Someone squeezed a trigger. In the heightened state, adrenaline rushing through my veins, my mind singing out and brushing its fingers across every other brain in that tension-soaked room, I knew immediately who it was. My brother squeezed the trigger of his Steyr and shot that child right between the eyes.

  The kid’s fingers had been on the trigger of his pistol – two of the child’s tiny fingers, in fact, easily fitting through the loop. They squeezed in reflex as he died. Librizzi’s brains were suddenly sprayed across the concrete floor.

  I slumped against the wall. There was a fight going on amongst the soldiers, an argument that had reached the point of fists. I couldn’t see it but I could feel it, Matt’s brain flaring up, shouting and screaming. There were other things going on – soldiers putting down zombies with bayonets, fanning out through the server room, securing the position. Was there still a battle going on? Didn’t know. Didn’t care. I suddenly felt very tired.

  After a while, Matt came and sat down next to me. “I ‘ m sorry about your friend,” he said. “I tried to…”

  “Fuck off,” I snarled.

  He fucked off.

  November 23

  We’ve secured the tunnels. More or less. What I mean is we’ve secured a perimeter near the room full of long-dead supercomputers with barricades and sentries. The tunnels themselves go on and on, spooling in and out of each other, stretching beneath the whole city, an endless concrete labyrinth. It’s hard to tell what they were for. Some rooms are full of 1960s switchboard stuff, all covered in plastic wrap, mothballed. Other rooms have modern computers, empty weapon racks, dormitories. Christ knows what the government was using it all for. Cold War shit, I guess.

  There are six kids left alive. None of them are older than ten, none of them know much about anything. They’re all scared and hysterical and traumatised about what happened. I can feel that misery swelling up in the server room like a tumour.

  We counted sixteen bodies. All kids. Only lost three of our own, including Librizzi. Not sure what to do with them. We’d bury or burn them, but we don’t have the manpower to be setting up bodies or pyres above ground when we’ve only got a dozen men ourselves. Shitty place to be put to rest, anyway. A highway median strip. Berkovitz ordered them put into an empty storeroom with whatever coverings we could find – canvas, blankets, sheets.

  It’s not because they’re kids. Well, maybe it’s because they’re kids. It’s mostly because they’re survivors. It feels wrong to kill any human being now. It was one thing back in Eucla, back when everything was going to shit, when everyone was scared and confused and desperate for food and water. It’s another thing now, after that long winter, after finding the Endeavour. Imagine coming all this way – surviving in these tunnels, going on scavenging run after scavenging run after scavenging run, watching friends die to stupid mistakes in the storeroom of a Woolworths, killing dozens or even hundreds of zombies – only to die yourself. Easy as that. Army platoon, automatic weapons, flashlights, boom. Done. Game over.

  I guess it’s more my perspective than anything else. I had an easy winter and now I’m back in the thick of it. God knows how many people Matt killed up north.

  He tried to come and talk to me a few hours later, after I told him to fuck off. I still didn’t want to talk to him, so I told him to fuck off again. I don’t know what happened, I showed up late, I was high on adrenalin. I saw Matt shoot a kid when seven or eight other people didn’t think that was necessary. Librizzi died.

  I don’t know.

  We found Tobias and Justin where I left them, i
n that tiny little room stinking of piss and shit and sweat. Tobias is lucid and seems to be over the worst of his concussion. He’s relieved control from Berkovitz while we regather and figure out what to do.

  I want to go back up to the surface, back up to the air and the sunlight, but they say it’s not safe right now. They’re probably right. While we were waiting up on the median strip we had a steady trickle of half a dozen zombies shambling at us at any one time, so now there’s probably heaps of them up there, crowding in on the doors. There’s no way it’s the only entrance, so that’s not a concern in the long run. We’re not going to get trapped.

  Still. I don’t like it down here.

  November 24

  Matt came and talked to me this morning, while I was sitting in one of the storage rooms cleaning my rifle over and over because I had nothing better to do. “I’m sorry,” he said. “All right? What’s it take?”

  “You broke Jonas’ nose,” I said.

  “And I’ve apologised to him,” he said.

  “Apparently he’s more forgiving than me.”

  Matt glared at me. “I didn’t break your fucking nose.”

  “You are going to get yourself killed,” I said sharply, putting down the rag and brush and looking him in the eye. “Do you understand that? You are going to fucking die, if you keep this up. You wanted to go down into the tunnels and get your fucking combat jollies and when someone tried to stop you – someone that we’ve been surviving with, someone that we’ve been friends with, for God knows how long – you fucking pistol whipped him. You are fucked, Matt. You realise that, don’t you? You are fucked in the head.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “I got carried away. I know. It wasn’t like that, anyway...”

  “Oh, fuck off,” I said. “You hit Jonas in the fucking face with your gun, and broke his nose, because he tried to talk you out of doing something dumb. You did that. If you want to make excuses, then just fuck off.”

  He stood up, walked towards the door. I called out to him before he got there, not looking at him, staring down at my disassembled rifle. “When’s Tobias sending you back?”

  “He’s not,” Matt said, as he walked out.

  I waited a sufficient time – enough that he’d be gone from the corridors outside – then went to the server room to look for Tobias.

  We’d kept the candles the kids had been using. Edging towards a medieval society – we still have Tilley lamps and electric lights at Jagungal, but for how long? The server room felt eerily like a darkened library, with the supercomputers as shelves. The group Berkovitz had brought down were sitting around, talking quietly, cleaning weapons, catching a bit of sleep, all of them in the shadows at the edge of the candlelight and the edge of my vision.

  I found Tobias asleep behind Jared’s desk, curled up on top of the kid’s old inflatable mattress. He woke before I could shake him, or even touch him – the SAS are not restful sleepers. “It’s one in the afternoon,” I said.

  “Cat napping,” he said, sitting up and rubbing his jaw. “Patton used to do it.”

  “I don’t know who that is,” I said. “Why aren’t you sending Matt back?”

  “Hmmm,” he said. “OK.”

  “Why aren’t you sending Matt back?” I repeated.

  “I just woke up,” he said. “Look. What would you do? Sedate him? Handcuff him?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m not sending anyone back right now, Aaron,” he said. “I’ve got thirty-one men here. I’ve got two choppers hidden away on a farm halfway to Yass, and exactly zero vehicles. I’ve got a team on the surface now checking all the other safehouses and the spot where we came undone, to see if anyone else survived or if we can pick up any working vehicles, but we have to assume a worst-case scenario. And on top of all that, I’ve got a dozen kids sitting and crying in a storeroom down the corridor. At the moment, we’re all staying put.”

  “He’s a liability,” I said. “He broke Jonas’ nose.”

  “Yes, he is,” Tobias said. “Which is why I confiscated his weapons. Apart from that, I’m keeping him here and keeping an eye on him. I’m not happy that he’s here, I’m not happy that Berkovitz let him come, but sending him back is more trouble than it’s worth.”

  “So we have no secure communications line to Jagungal.”

  “We don’t need one,” Tobias said. “This isn’t New England. I want Cole and his ASIO boys to hear us. I want to talk to them plainly. We can still end this without any more bloodshed.”

  I snorted. “Not with Matt around.”

  Tobias frowned. “I know you’re worried about him, but he’s not exactly going to go storming into the ASIO headquarters with his bare hands. So relax. It’ll be all right.”

  “How are we going on that, anyway?

  Tobias sighed. “I’m going to have to go talk to them. We found a passage going up into their HQ, but if we know about it, they sure as hell know about it. I’m not sending us storming up through that. Cole’s not a psycho. He’s not Draeger. He’s doing this because he was ordered to, and now that there’s been a coup...” He shrugged. “We just need to talk to him.”

  “And you’re doing that aboveground?”

  A cynical smile. “Not much choice. Ten minutes, by the gates. If they shoot me, Berkovitz is in charge, and God help you all.”

  “Can I come?” I asked.

  Tobias cocked his head. “Hmm. Thought I was talking to Aaron. Has Matt put on a wig and a mask?”

  “Don’t joke about his face,” I said.

  Tobias made a conciliatory gesture which was all I was likely to get. “OK. Yes. You can come, to the fallback point, in the car. You’re not getting out of it. Why do you want to?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just want to get up on the outside again. Look at the sky. This underground stuff – I didn’t think it would bother me, but it is.”

  Tobias nodded. “Sure. OK. Well, we’re going at 0900 tomorrow. Be ready. I’m going back to sleep, if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I went back to my storeroom, back to my disassembled jigsaw puzzle of a gun. Tobias was bothering me. He’s 99% lucid, but that little 1% keeps sneaking in: just slightly dreamy, or odd. Not quite the same as he used to be.

  We won’t be able to tell for sure until we get back to the medical team at Jagungal, but it’s my suspicion he has a mild brain injury. Nothing too bad, but something a bit beyond concussion. He took a bad knock to the skull, and something has been jolted.

  I could say something. But I’d rather have Tobias in charge, functioning at 99%, than anyone else in charge, functioning at full capacity.

  November 25

  The scouts Tobias sent up to the surface came back last night with one of the Land Cruisers and three survivors from our original group, including Lieutenant Flanagan, who’d managed to survive the night of chaos. He and the others made it to Government House and holed up there. So now there’s thirty-five of us. Tobias also sent a pair of privates and a civilian up to the Telstra Tower, in the mountains at the edge of the city, to establish a radio outpost so we can stay in touch with Jagungal.

  First thing in the morning we set off to finally go and speak with Ira Cole. The Land Cruiser had been left parked near the water block entrance on the median strip, and we had to kill only a couple of lurking zombies before getting in and moving off as quick as possible. It was a small team of five – Tobias, Lieutenant Flanagan, Justin Tomlinson, a corporal named Crawford, and myself.

  We drove up and around the lake on the eastern ring road, going through the off-ramps and backstreets and sometimes across the median strips when we encountered a roadblock or pile-up; Tobias had made a pretty solid map on the day of his attempt before we had to flee the college, but he’d left it behind, and after the blow to the head his memory was less than perfect. We eventually arrived up around the vicinity of the ASIO compound at about half past ten.

  We dropped Tobias off a kilometre aw
ay; beyond reliable sniper range, given the wind. And then we took off again. I didn’t like that at all, but Tobias had explained it perfectly reasonably. If we stayed put, engine idling, waiting for him, then all we’d do was attract zombies. Dangerous for us, dangerous for him. So we drove off again, back along the ring road, back through the endless embassies and offices and government buildings.

  Tobias had a mic on, though – we needed to be in contact with him, needed to know how the parley went and when to head back for him. Flanagan hadn’t been happy about it. He’d wanted to go himself, so that if Cole’s men decided to literally shoot the messenger, we weren’t down a CO. But Tobias was confident that wouldn’t happen. Tobias was confident Cole was a reasonable man operating under a certain set of orders, and that when he learned the MPs who’d issued those orders on Christmas Island had been stood down, he’d re-evaluate.

  I was hoping it was Captain Tobias who was sure about that. Not Head Injury Tobias.

  Our fallback point was the Australian War Memorial – which, on that horrible night a week ago, would have been next in line on our list of safe havens after the Lodge. Strong, fortified, good location, easily defensible. The Land Cruiser skidded to a halt outside the gates, Justin jumped outside to open them, and in we went. Too easy.

  Justin and Flanagan went outside for a perimeter scan, but Crawford stayed behind the wheel, and I remained in the passenger seat. We were listening to Tobias over the mic system. In the ten minutes it had taken us to drive to the memorial, he hadn’t said a word – he’d been making his way there, through the parks and bushland along the lakeshore. As we arrived at the memorial, we’d heard him arrive in turn at the ASIO building, shout his intentions, and declare he was unarmed. Now we were waiting for Cole to come down.