“Look, I know it doesn’t look great,” Tobias said. “A whole bunch of Army officers, and we’re the ones with the guns, et cetera. But this isn’t Central America. No military coup, no military takeover, no El Presidente. That’s the last thing any of us want. And if that means some people involved in what happened at Jagungal go unpunished… well, Aaron, such is life.”
It’s night-time now: the insects singing in the jungle, the lights of the refugee ships blinking out on the swell. We had dinner in the restaurant, Tobias’ team and Jess and Hannah and the professor, and it was a relief to talk about things other than politics. But now I’m back up on the balcony – Professor Llewellyn has already gone to bed – and I’m looking out over a moonlit ocean and I can still see the soldiers standing guard down in the car park and along the beach road. The government’s soldiers, not Tobias’ soldiers. Something about this place still makes me uneasy.
I don’t know why I’m arguing against the Governor-General. I absolutely don’t want a military government; we’ve seen how that ends up, in New England. It keeps people alive but it turns into a police state. I want to keep what little civilisation we have left. It’s just a shame that this particular democratic government revealed themselves to be gutless weasels who were paranoid and suspicious about us, and murdered a lot of innocent survivors as a result. Why does it have to be them?
December 13
5.30am
The beach again. Matt still sitting at the tide mark, though I doubted there were any real tides in this place. It was still overcast, still neither hot nor cold, still quiet except for the gentle washing of the waves.
I sat by Matt and talked for a while. He was no longer muttering to himself, just staring out at the ocean. He didn’t acknowledge me but I thought if I spoke for a while he might. Like someone in a coma. I don’t know what I was trying to prove. Was he dead? Was he trapped somewhere? Was he just in my head?
I don’t know how long I’d been talking when I started to speak about addressing parliament tomorrow. I told him what Tobias had said, what the Governor-General had said, when Matt suddenly said, Don’t trust them.
“Matt?” I asked. It had been his mental voice; his body and face were motionless. Matt? I tried again. Can you hear me?
Nothing.
Who shouldn’t I trust? Matt?
And then I woke up.
I checked my watch; it was 2:38am. Professor Llewellyn was snoring in the other bed. Rain was drumming down on the roof. I rolled out of bed, pulled a shirt on, and went out onto the covered balcony.
The rain was coming down quite heavily. It’s the wet season, I guess. It was so thick I couldn’t even see the lights of the refugee boats out at sea anymore. Thunder rumbled in the distance. I sat on one of the cheap plastic chairs and watched the curtain of rain coming down from the eaves, listened to it splashing across the trees and the cars and the road.
Don’t trust them. Who’s that supposed to mean? Tobias and the Governor-General? That was who I’d been talking about right before he said it. But the Governor-General had struck me as a good man, more or less, and Tobias I’d trust with my life.
Maybe he’d meant Parliament. But I already don’t trust them.
Why should I take Matt’s advice, anyway? Just because he’s dead? Matt hadn’t made a good decision in a long time.
No chance of getting back to sleep after that. Two consecutive nights on that goddamn beach. Will I dream about him again tonight? What exactly are these dreams? Can I... help him? Bring him back?
That was stupid. I shouldn’t even have written that down. Matt is dead and gone and I need to accept it.
I wish I could talk to the Endeavour about this. I wish I was back in Jagungal instead of wasting time on this godforsaken island.
I wish Matt hadn’t died.
The rain stopped a little while ago, and the clouds have cleared. The night sky is beginning to turn grey. Soon the sun will rise, and the others will wake up, and I’ll have to go and waste more time addressing the dregs of Australia’s government when I could be figuring out what’s going on with Matt.
12.00pm
Tobias, as always, was the first to rise. He found me sitting on the balcony with my journal, staring west out over the ocean, watching the mountain shadow slowly shrink away from the refugee boats in towards the shore. “Couldn’t sleep?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Although not for the reasons you think.”
Tobias cocked his head, inviting elaboration.
I sighed. “Never mind. It’s not important.” Not to him, anyway. “When are we going to Parliament?”
“We’re due at ten,” he said. “Plenty of time. I’m speaking first. You feeling OK?”
“I haven’t felt OK in a long time.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “It’ll be fine,” he said, and left.
The others awoke in dribs and drabs. We had breakfast down in the restaurant at eight. Fried fish. An unusual choice for breakfast, but still better than anything I’ve had at Jagungal. I’m assuming fish makes up a pretty large amount of most of the islanders’ diet. There can only be so many frozen stores tucked away around here.
I was sitting next to Corporal Martin, probably the youngest of Tobias’ retinue, probably about thirty, but still a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and, if memory serves, a survivor from the clusterfuck that was the evacuation of Sydney. He led a group of civilian survivors around in the Illawarra before coming up to Jagungal in winter. “So you’re going to give them hell about the ASIO attack, right?” he asked me.
“I’m not supposed to,” I said.
Martin snorted. “So what are you supposed to do?”
“Reassure them that I’m not a dangerous alien and that the Endeavour has the best interests of humanity at heart,” I said. “I guess.”
Martin shrugged. “Well, anyone can see you’re not an alien, whatever it is that you and the ship get up to with your brains. I don’t really get what the fuss is about, to be honest. I mean, I appreciate a trip to the tropics as much as the next bloke, but I don’t know why we still bother listening to the idiots up here. They should just put McLeod in charge and be done with it.”
“I don’t think it’s as simple as that.”
Martin just shrugged. You can’t argue with a shrug.
After breakfast, we were loaded into cars and driven to Parliament – not just me and Tobias, but all the others, I suppose because they didn’t have much else to do but join the spectators for what was supposed to be an important joint session. It wasn’t long – a ten minute drive down the coast, towards the port district.
Not one month ago, I was sitting in the House of Representatives in Canberra, with zombies clawing at the doors, waiting for reinforcements from Jagungal to save my ass. And subconsciously, that was what I was expecting, when I’d imagined myself addressing the government in my head – not that building exactly, but something just as illustrious and grand.
I’d been wrong. I found out later that when the remnants of the government had started arriving on Christmas Island, suddenly bolstering the extant population of two thousand people – smaller than Cooma! – there had been virtually no buildings big enough to house large meetings. Even the high school didn’t have a gymnasium. They’d ended up taking over one of the warehouses at the island’s only harbour – which had the added bonus of sturdy fences and other security features – and installing seats and tables and whatever else they needed.
This was what I learned later. At the time it felt odd to be taken to Parliament and instead being driven into a port facility, no different from Fremantle back in Perth: motionless cranes, long warehouses, stacks of shipping containers streaked with bird shit.
We were taken out of the cars and put through metal scanners. I had to surrender my Glock, which goes against every instinct I’ve developed, but on the off-chance that we’d been lured there as a plot to kill us I doubted a 9mm handgun was going to save me. There were soldiers
stationed all over the place, as well as blue-uniformed police and men wearing suits who must have belonged to whatever Australia’s Secret Service equivalent is. I spotted a few snipers dotted around the place, on warehouse roofs or up in the crane gantries.
Tobias and I were separated from the others, who were being taken towards the public gallery, or whatever counted as that now. I caught a glimpse of the warehouse interior as we were led around the side, of the hundred odd politicians waiting for us. In other circumstances I might have been nervous, but I wasn’t. My mind was elsewhere: on a beach with my brother. We’d been assigned some political wonk who was telling us about protocol and correct forms of address, whom Tobias was listening to, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
We were taken inside, through a small door at the back of the warehouse. Large pre-fab walls blocked this quarter of it off from the rest, and there was a small army of staffers working away at desks. I could still see the rust-stained holes in the concrete floor where shelving units had been removed, and I could hear the murmur of a waiting crowd behind the walls. It reminded me of being backstage at a theatre, which struck me as fairly appropriate.
“Please wait here,” the wonk said. I’d forgotten his name – Sean or Shane or something like that. “Captain, when I motion, you may come to the pulpit, but please don’t speak until the Speaker has properly introduced you.”
We waited. The Speaker was leading the assembled MPs through the Lord’s Prayer, their heads bowed and eyes closed. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors...” I wondered idly if they’d always opened Parliament with a prayer or if they’d added that after the apocalyptic zombie hellraising.
Eventually the wonk motioned to Tobias, and he stepped up to the pulpit. The set-up was closer to a theatre than I’d thought, with what I suppose you’d call wings – I guess because they didn’t have the second floor to accommodate press and spectators. From where we’d been led I could see the jury-rigged seats, which looked no different to the wooden stands at a footy oval, and the ramshackle Speaker’s seat at the head of the chamber. I could see the TV cameras now, on the opposite end of the wings from me, filming Tobias as he walked up to the lectern. The politicians had all stood up and were applauding. From my vantage point I could only see the last slice of them, a group of middle-aged men at the end of the bleachers. I guess the dress policy had been relaxed after the rout to Christmas Island – they’d ditched the suit jackets and some had rolled their sleeves up. Still wearing ties, though. Unbelievable.
“On behalf of the House,” the Speaker was saying, “I welcome as guests the President of the Senate and honourable senators to this sitting of the House of Representatives, to receive an address by Captain Jonathon Tobias of the Special Air Service Regiment, acting commander of ADF personnel at the ASLA, and Aaron King...”
“What’s the ASLA?” I whispered to the wonk.
“Alleged Spacecraft Landing Area,” he said. “Jagungal. It sort of stuck.”
“...representative of the AS, also known as the Endeavour.”
Applause. I’d missed the part about me. What had he tacked on before ‘representative?’ Alien menace?
I’d thought Tobias was about to speak, but someone I couldn’t see, beyond the pre-fab wings, was standing up and delivering a prepared speech. The Prime Minister, I guess – the new Prime Minister, since the old one was under arrest, imprisoned somewhere else on the island. And that one hadn’t even been PM at the time of the outbreak. He hadn’t been the guy I’d watched on TV giving not-very-reassuring speeches in front of a bunch of Australian flags back in January. That guy hadn’t made it, he’d died, like so many other Australians, his body lost somewhere in Canberra or Darwin. Maybe still out there as a zombie, stalking the streets, gnashing his teeth. The deputy PM – Martin Vascoe, Tobias had said his name was – had been catapulted into leadership and had eventually decided it was a good idea to send his intelligence agents to murder a bunch of people and steal our nuclear warhead.
So now I was looking at our third Prime Minister for the year. He had a strong, clear speaking voice, and though I assumed he was interrupting to make some kind of interjection, it appeared to be yet another part of the proceedings – not just the Speaker but the Prime Minister had to welcome the guest. He was going on about the proud history of the armed forces, especially the SAS. In the muggy heat his voice had the effect of a high school teacher towards the end of semester, when all you can think about is the beach. There was no air-conditioning in the warehouse; a scattering of ceiling fans had been affixed to the steel rafters, squeaking at full speed, rotating hot air around. I zoned out until the Speaker introduced Tobias yet again, and he began to speak.
“Prime Minister, thank you for your welcome. Mr Speaker, Mr President, members of the House and the Senate, ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today.”
I noticed, across from me in the wings, behind the press, the Governor-General. I guess he had no legal standing to be in Parliament during a session. Separation of powers; just another spectator. He smiled at me.
“...the recent events at Jagungal, or as you refer to it, the ASLA,” Tobias said. “Since arriving on Christmas Island I have been assured many times – by people in both the civilian sector and the Defence Force – that it will not happen again. I am standing here today to assure you that it need not happen again.
“When the dead began to rise in January, I was stationed at the Campbell Barracks in Perth. I was flown to Canberra, along with my platoon, to assist in the evacuation of politicians and public servants. Perhaps some of you recognise me; indeed, I see a few familiar faces here today. We evacuated to Darwin, and a few weeks later here, to Christmas Island. I don’t need to remind any of you of the horror and the carnage that accompanied those evacuations.
“In May, myself and the surviving members of my platoon were assigned to the HMAS Darwin to investigate the ASLA in the Snowy Mountains. By chance, we encountered Aaron and Matthew King along the way, and realised that they could hold the key to unravelling the mystery. I made the decision – the authorised decision, I’ll remind you – to bring them with us. And in the events that followed, I have become, in a way, the leader of a mixed military and civilian force which may yet hold the world’s fate in its hands.
“I don’t need to recount any of this for you. You know better than anyone what’s been happening this year. I do so to remind you that I was – and remain – an ordinary soldier. I may be a captain, and I may be in the SAS – in fact, as far as we know, I’m the last surviving member of the SAS. But I never asked for any of this to happen. I simply seek to do my duty, to serve my country, and to protect its people. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.
“I know that there are some people in the government today – both in Parliament and the public service, and maybe even in the Defence Force – who feel that I’m... unaccountable. That I’ve become a force of my own, that I lack the necessary oversight from the government. It was that line of thinking, in part, which led to the revolting and cowardly attack in November in which a coalition of former intelligence officers absconded with the nuclear warhead which we fought so hard to retrieve from Queensland. During that attack many innocent people, including women and children, were murdered. More of my men were killed when we pursued those intelligence officers to Canberra.”
The chamber was silent. Some of the politicians in the small part that I could see had noticed that I was standing in the wings. To my disgust, that were nudging each other and pointing me out to their colleagues, rather than listening to Tobias.
“I am willing to accept that this attack was orchestrated by a rogue force within the government, which sadly included the former prime minister,” Tobias said. “I believe we need to draw a line under it and move on. I know that the honourable members and senators in this chamber have spent far too long grappling with rogue military commanders across our country. You are all fully aware o
f the costs and consequences of splinter forces within the military and within the government.
“We have been working globally to destroy the machine bases. We are, at this stage, confident of a prospective attack before the end of the year. We stand at a critical time in the history not just of Australia, but of the human race. Solidarity and cooperation are more vital than ever before. I stand here today to assure you that whatever fears or misunderstandings or misinterpretations might have led to a rift between us, I am – as I have always been – a loyal servant of Australia’s democratically elected government.”
The chamber stood to applaud. The Speaker said a few words of thanks, and Tobias was ushered off into the opposite wings. The Speaker was introducing me now, but I wasn’t really listening. Tobias, it was clear, had just been the warm-up. Everyone was really here to see me: the main attraction, the circus freak.
The wonk prodded me in the back and before I knew it I was walking out before Parliament and standing behind the pulpit to the Speaker’s left, where a few moments ago Tobias had been standing and speaking so effortlessly. That fucker. He’d prepared that speech beforehand for sure.
Now, for the first time, I could see the entirety of what remained of the Parliament of Australia. A ragged bunch, just over a hundred men and women (mostly men), scattered across jury-rigged tiered seating as though they were about to watch a high school basketball game in a gymnasium. I knew that the ones aligned across the table down the middle would be the Prime Minister and his cabinet, but I didn’t know which one was the new PM. All of them were still wearing full business suits – but then all of them, I reminded myself, had been catapulted into top jobs a few short weeks ago. The only one I recognised was Lovelock, the new Defence Minister who’d met us at the airport, sitting patiently.
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 175