“You refused to retire two years ago,” Tess said. “So who’s to blame if you’re here?”
“If I’d known being helpful would have led to me standing on the roof of a car, holding an assault rifle, protecting Canberra from zombies, I’d have… actually, I don’t know what I’d have done.”
“Moved to Tasmania?” Tess asked. “Or New Zealand, or Samoa. Except they’re no better than here. And everywhere else is far worse.”
“Not much worse,” Mick said. “In Timor, we’re holding the airport in Dili, and the port of Kupang. We’ll retake Timor before the fleet reaches Malaysia.”
“Now you’re sounding as optimistic as Dr Smilovitz,” Tess said. “Anyway, what puzzles me is why that assassin went after Pete Guinn.”
“For the plane,” Mick said. “That’s what you told me. And they tortured the pilots for the code which would unlock the only plane in Broken Hill capable of taking them back to South America.”
“Those killers were Aussies,” she said. “There’s more to it. More than the Guinns said, and maybe more than they knew. You don’t send a professional hitman after a bloke who sells carpets. You certainly don’t send a serial killer, a butcher who flayed people alive over days. Did the serial killer work exclusively for the cartel? And does that mean that every victim, here and across the world, wasn’t a random murder but actually a cartel assassination? And why did the killer go to Broken Hill?”
“What you’re really saying is, rather than playing soldier, you want to be hunting the serial killer,” Mick said. “You’re annoyed that you can’t. I never thought I’d agree with Erin Vaughn on anything, but our attorney general is right; a serial killer who goes years between victims isn’t a priority when we’re digging mass graves. The outbreak changes everything.” He pointed down at the corpses. “The first week after Manhattan, the soldiers were deployed to the outback, to the airports. Now they’re overseas helping with the evacuation. The police are clearing the outback and restoring order to places like Melbourne.” He pointed at the roundabout where new conscripts were being shown how to fall-in. “And for soldiers, we’re using civil servants and civilians who don’t know how lucky they are not to be in one of the coastal cities.”
“How lucky we are, too,” Tess said. “In three weeks we’ve put together an invasion fleet.”
“Two invasion fleets,” Mick said. “But you know how I hate using military terminology. A million people aboard a fleet of cruise ships heading to Hawaii. Another million gone to Malaysia. Some might be retired soldiers or reservists, but most are refugees, and they’ve got a short voyage to learn to be soldiers. All because we’re not ready for so many refugees so soon. That’s the real problem here. Politicians like Ian Lignatiev and Oswald Owen treat this like a war, when it should be a relief effort.”
Another gunshot sounded, this one more distant, and not nearly as loud as the reaction from the conscripts behind them. In turn, that was drowned by the yell from the handful of NCOs as they shouted the new troops into their teams.
“Maybe that’s the root of my anxiety,” Tess said. “My gut says this is the wrong way of doing absolutely everything, but despite the hallway outside our hotel suite being one of the corridors of power, I can’t change what’s happening. I didn’t ask last night, was there any word from Liu on the pilot’s grapevine?”
“She’s still ferrying people out of Vancouver. VIPs to Guam, not children now they’ve got those 787s playing air-ambulance.”
“VIPs like President Trowbridge?” Tess asked.
“Him?” Mick asked. “I don’t think anyone’s heard from Trowbridge since General Yoon sent the message he’d been sworn in as the U.S. president. Bloke’s dead if you ask me. Good riddance. Never liked the idea of a president. Having that ambassador and the Governors of Guam and Hawaii run things as a triumvirate is far more sensible.” He sniffed. “Smells like breakfast.”
“It smells like beef,” Tess said. “They’re slaughtering the cattle.”
“You knew they would,” Mick said. “And I’d say that’s our cue to call it a night. We’ll grab some steak, take it back to the hotel, and we can watch a movie. I’ve a good one I’ve been saving, about a ghost who rides a motorbike. And don’t tell me you’ve anything better to do.”
“Give me a pen, I’ll write you a list,” she said. “Hang on. Do you hear that? Engine. Approaching. Fast.”
Day had now completely banished night, leaving a clear view of the street: the burned wreck on the parched front lawn of the smoke-blackened house; the undead bodies shot at sunset whose arrival, coinciding with Tess’s inspection, had led her to spend her night standing watch on the wall. The broken windows, the trampled lawns, the scattered junk dropped by fleeing householders, greedy looters, and frantic refugees. But beyond those, in the distance, and approaching at speed down Shoalhaven Avenue, was a black four-door with dust on the windscreen, dents on the fender, and suitcases strapped to the roof.
“Hold your fire!” Tess called. “Hold your fire!”
“Rule three,” Mick called loudly to calm the nerves of the conscripted civilians. “Zombies can’t run. They certainly can’t drive.”
“But will they brake?” Tess whispered. “Get ready to jump and run back.”
The car was heading straight up the road, towards their section of the wall. A wall built strong enough to deter an un-human fist but nowhere near strong enough to withstand two tons of speeding metal. The car didn’t slow, but it should have. At fifty metres away, the driver swerved around a charred trailer, abandoned in the middle of the road. But the driver hadn’t seen the pile of timbers dumped behind. Thirty metres away and speeding too fast to slow, as it slammed into the debris, both wheels on the left-hand side rose, spinning in the air while the foremost right-side wheel slammed into an abandoned tyre. Pivoting on one rear wheel, the car spun and flipped, landing on the passenger-side doors. Metal screamed as the car spun, scattering suitcases as it rolled onto its roof, grinding to an upside-down halt among the undead corpses.
Tess had already jumped down from the wall in an instinctive leap. An eye-blinding bolt of pain shivered up her left side, a jarring reminder of Sydney and the stab wound that had curtailed her dreams of promotion and returned her to the town in which she’d grown up.
“Stretchers!” she yelled, limping towards the wreck until the pain subsided sufficiently that she could run. Keeping her eyes on the corpses around which she picked a path, she gave the car barely a glance until she heard the moan. Her gun was drawn and raised before she heard the words.
“Help.”
“No worries, help’s here,” she said, though she didn’t holster her weapon. Something was wrong. Very wrong. More so than was usual even for these supremely strange days.
Three women were in the car, all in their early twenties. Two conscious in the front. One unconscious in the back. All three were dressed in nondescript T-shirts and cotton trousers. Suitable for the long southern summer that only at night was beginning to show signs of turning to autumn. But most of the car’s interior, like the roof before the car flipped, contained bags. Soft holdalls in the back, unlike the hard cases which had scattered across the road. But if those cases’ spilled contents were anything to go by, these people had been transporting food. Enough cans and packets to open a store. But that wasn’t what had raised Tess’s internal alarm.
“Help us,” the driver whispered.
“Shh!” Tess said, turning from the car, stepping back along the road, looking among the corpses for the crawler. She could hear it, that dead gasping wheeze, near but not deadly close, not yet. She stepped off the road, onto the parched strip of lawn belonging to a partially burned house, circling the car, scanning for movement.
Just as wood snapped, Tess realised the danger wasn’t from road or car. She spun around as a four-metre-wide section of the smoke-blackened, two-metre-tall, faux-picket-fence collapsed. Three zombies fell with it, but Tess aimed at the fourth, a grotesque figur
e with an oozing stump instead of a hand, a seeping hole for an eye, and two knives embedded in its chest. Previously, the monster had stood behind the now fallen trio. As it lurched over them, red-brown pus sprayed from its missing hand.
Again, instinct took over, and Tess aimed for the centre mass, firing two shots before three weeks’ nightmare experience reasserted control, and she shifted aim to its head. The zombie fell and she stepped back. Firing at the zombies on the ground, two shots and then three. The crawling creatures moved and rolled, thrashed, and bucked, trying to stand while also trying to claw at her, but they failed to do either before hot lead took them to an eternal peace.
Tess stepped back another pace, aiming into the rear garden of the smoke-blackened, one-and-half-storey Scandi-barn where the undead traipsed through a gap in the far fence. Dozens of them. Trampling across sun-scalded grass, heading straight for the crash.
“Walking like that,” Mick said calmly as he came to stand by her side. He raised his rifle, a fully automatic HK416 with a suppressor he’d been given by the SASR in Broken Hill and rarely went anywhere without. “Walking one zombie after the other, reminds me of processionary caterpillars.”
Tess held her fire while he began his. The bullets left the gun as a soft whisper, which gained a barking echo when Major Belinda Kelly reached their side. On the old soldier, nose, lips, and mouth added topography to a face that was mostly scars. Kelly’s walking-story of experience was mirrored by the conflicting ranks she wore on her jet-black utility uniform. Her shoulder-board insignia marked her as a major, while the crown sewn to both sleeves reminded the world of the warrant officer she’d recently been. Now she was in command of the capital’s northern defences.
“Reckon we’ve found the source of the incursion,” Kelly said, putting down the last of the approaching undead. “I make that seventeen hostiles.”
“Over here,” Mick called to the approaching conscripts who’d been brave enough to follow Major Kelly, but wise enough to take their time. “Who’s got the stretchers? Let’s get these people out of here.”
“They’ll have to go to quarantine,” Kelly said.
“The airport facility is empty,” Mick said. “I’ll drive them, if you give me a couple of people to watch them during the journey.”
“I’ll secure the house,” Tess said, stepping over the corpses.
“I’ll get you a backup team,” Kelly said.
“No need,” Tess said. Most of the recruits were greener than lettuce, and as familiar with combat; she didn’t want to fret about friendly fire as well as feral teeth.
Beneath her feet, the singed fence creaked. The charred grass crackled. The glass from the broken window crunched. Tess kept her gun raised, sweeping left to right across the empty garden, then more slowly from right to left, taking in the broken windows and burned back doors.
The fires had begun during the early days of the outbreak, while she was still in Broken Hill. Hasty back-garden cookouts during the early power cuts had sparked and spread. With fire crews already deployed to the bush, the blazes had grown. With water supplies restricted, bringing the inferno under control had taken too long. Homes had burned, and the most northern and eastern suburbs had been evacuated. The wall had been built. But each day, each night, the undead traipsed in from the north, following the road convoys of refugees. But unlike the car-bound humans who kept to the blacktop, the undead wandered aimlessly, arriving in ones and twos, tens and twenties, with no pattern or consistency. In turn, this placed a shifting pressure on the wall, testing the untried conscripts, exhausting the handful of experienced soldiers. Subsequently, it had been decreed the suburbs would be reclaimed. More conscripts had been brought in, and today they would go house-to-house, street-to-street, and create a new, taller, stronger, and more permanent, wall on the very outskirts.
Tess crossed into the next garden, and then the one beyond where tumbled concrete besser-blocks created a narrow channel down which the undead had been forced. An artificial passageway ending at an alley running parallel to the road, and which was, currently, empty. She didn’t lower her gun, but listened, waited, counting to thirty before heading back to the scene of the crash. Mick and the injured car passengers had gone, though Major Kelly remained with three obviously nervous conscripts.
“We’re clear,” Tess said. “They made their way into that back garden during the night. The noise of that car galvanised them to push down that fire-weakened fence.”
“Thank you, Commissioner,” Kelly said. “The car’s occupants were looters, by the look of that gear.”
“And they drove all the way from Mildura,” Tess said, pointing to the upside-down sticker on the bumper of the upturned car. “So maybe not looters if they drove from that far away. Maybe shop owners, coming with the last of their stock.”
“Which is ours now,” Kelly said in what was not quite a question, not quite a statement.
“Ours, yes,” Tess said. “Detail some people to take it to the emergency reserve at the museum. We’ll distribute it after the beef is gone.”
“We’ll take all that can be salvaged to the emergency food reserve, yes, ma’am,” Kelly said.
Tess caught the caveat, but didn’t argue. Kelly would claim and distribute most of the supplies among the conscripts. Some might make it to the food reserve, though during the last three weeks, very little had.
“You heard the commissioner!” Kelly added, addressing the trio of conscripts in a parade-ground bark. “Pack everything up. But be careful where you put your hands.”
“Did Dr Dodson take the patients to the airport?” Tess asked.
“Aboard a van we’re calling an ambulance,” Kelly said.
“Then he’s left my car,” Tess said. “So I’m driving home for a few hours sleep. G’day, Major.”
“Before you go, ma’am,” Major Kelly said in a tone Tess had last heard just before she’d ended up spending an entire night standing guard.
“You want to ask another favour?” Tess said.
“We’re five non-coms short,” Kelly said. “Three are crook. Two disappeared. I can run a double team, promote a couple of promising recruits and put them on guard duty here, but we’ll still be short.”
“I’ve a cabinet meeting at four,” Tess said. “I really need to get some sleep before then.”
“This will only take an hour,” Kelly said. “Two at most.”
Tess doubted it, but she could hardly say no. “What do you want me to do?”
Chapter 2 - Team Stonefish
Bonner, Canberra
Ten minutes later, with her water bottle refilled, but her heart singing for coffee, Tess stood in front of the leaderless six-person squad. Three women, three men. The oldest had at least a decade on Tess, while the youngest should still have been in school. All wore green coats, the same cut, style, and, unfortunately for the large man with the pancake physique, the same size. Despite the designer swoosh on the breast, they were as close to uniforms as these recruits would see for a long time.
“G’day,” she said. “My name’s Tess Qwong. I’m a deputy commissioner with the Australian Federal Police, but a couple of weeks ago, I was an inspector in Broken Hill. Any of you served in the military? Police? No worries. Despite what some people might say, this isn’t war, and it certainly isn’t policing. Do you see the singed rooftops on the other side of the wall? A string of end-of-the-world barbies got out of hand, and we evacuated those suburbs. Now we’re reclaiming them. Bet you all heard the shooting a few minutes ago? You know what it means?”
“Zombies,” the young man said, removing his cap so he could scratch his very recently shaved, and already sunburned, scalp.
“How old are you, mate?” Tess asked.
“You going to ask anyone else that?” he asked. “Or just me.”
“Fair point. Good on ya for volunteering.”
“You mean we had a choice?” the young man asked.
“I guess not,” Tess said. “What’s your
name?”
“Hay-Zach,” he said.
“Zach? G’day,” Tess said. If the teenager wanted to rename himself, she wouldn’t judge. The one silver lining in the apocalypse was being able to escape a little of your past. “This isn’t war, but that doesn’t mean there’s no danger,” Tess added. “We’re going house-to-house searching all the properties in the empty suburbs between here and the Mulligans Flat Nature Reserve.”
“Just us?” Zach asked.
“Everyone,” Tess said. “Each team has been allocated a couple of streets. By lunchtime, we’ll be done. This afternoon, you’ll be building a new and more permanent wall, taller than that one.”
“And then we’ll guard it?” a woman with silver-grey hair asked. She couldn’t be more than a year older than Tess, so it was probably dyed, but instead of opting for the colour of her youth, she’d fully embraced the shades of her future. Her trio of nose rings appeared to be gold, while her suit jacket looked designer, and her boots were the kind of op-shop rejects an optimist would call vintage.
“A couple of weeks ago,” Tess said, “if you told me I’d be here, doing this, I’d have said you’d spent too long fishing for flies in the noonday sun. So I’ll be honest and say I don’t know what you’ll be doing tomorrow. Do you know one another? No. You should. From here on in, you’ll serve together. You’re a team. A unit. Mates. In the worst of times and the best of times, both of which are ahead of us all. So, who are you?”
“Elaina Slater,” the woman with the trio of nose rings said. “I was a primary school teacher in Wagga Wagga. The entire school was evacuated to Tasmania, but I thought I’d do more to keep them safe by volunteering here.”
“Clyde Brook,” said the man with the sparse goatee, carrying one of the squad’s two shotguns. “My husband and son were sent to Tasmania. Only one of us was allowed to go with him.”
“My wife took my son,” said the forty-year-old man with the pancake chest, carrying the other shotgun. “My ex-wife,” he added with a sad sigh.
Life Goes On | Book 3 | While The Lights Are On [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 2