Life Goes On | Book 3 | While The Lights Are On [Surviving The Evacuation]

by Tayell, Frank

  “Ah, pity,” Mick said. “How are you for fuel? Can you top us up?”

  “Sure,” Talya said. She frowned. “Are we supposed to charge you? I guess not.”

  “Mick, if you can get her loaded,” Tess said, “I’ll go and have a word with the person running this place.”

  “You want Judge Munsch,” Talya said. “Up at the refinery.”

  “Great,” Tess said. “Can you give me a ride?”

  “Leaving you to help me, Rob-O,” Mick said. “Do you know rule seven?”

  “There are rules?” Hansen asked, suddenly flushing with anxiety at a test for which he’d not studied.

  “Rule seven,” Mick said, “never let an old bloke do the heavy lifting.”

  Leaving Mick and Hansen to walk to the hangar, Tess climbed into the passenger seat of the airfield’s service vehicle as Talya Bundeson took the wheel.

  “I’m guessing few planes have arrived recently?” Tess asked.

  “Not yet,” Talya said. “Not compared to Jackson. We heard they’ve got a million new workers at the oil refinery.”

  “They spun you a yarn,” Tess said. “They’ve been told to make provision for up to a million by the year’s end. We’ll provide the resources for housing, however many are sent. When they’re sent. If they’re sent.”

  “Because we can’t take that many here,” Talya said. “We couldn’t manage a tenth. There’s not enough shelter and nowhere near enough water.”

  “Same problem as everywhere,” Tess said. “Most likely, it’ll be workers from Jackson who are transferred here once they’ve finished expanding the oil refinery. But we’re still talking months away. Natural gas is in phase-three of our plans, and we’re still figuring out phase-one.”

  “That’s the scheme the prime minister was talking about on the radio?” Talya asked.

  “That’s it,” Tess said. “You’ve been listening to the broadcasts?”

  “Sometimes. Some days,” Talya said.

  The airfield’s main gate hadn’t been reinforced, and nor had the fence ringing the runway. Designed to stop wildlife, it might slow the undead. The sentry, armed with a hunting rifle, might stop a handful of zombies, but not a swarm.

  “Have you had many zombies out here?” Tess asked.

  “A couple,” Talya said as they drove through the gate. “None for a week. But I thought they’d all been killed.”

  “Not yet,” Tess said. “How did a judge come to run a gas refinery? My notes say a woman called Sandra Toyne was managing the facility.”

  “The judge’s brother worked here,” Talya said, gritting her teeth loud enough for Tess to hear the molars grind. “After the outbreak, he went to get the judge. Ms Toyne disappeared.”

  “Why isn’t the judge’s brother running the place?”

  “He died. A week ago,” Talya said.

  “But you’ve been running the airport for a while?”

  “Only for a week,” she said. “But I’ve worked here for five years.”

  Tess didn’t ask her next question because the answer was in front of her.

  A hundred metres from the entrance to the refinery, and ten metres back from the road, stood a three-metre-high, four-metre-wide wooden box. Steps led up from both sides. At the top was a lever to operate the trapdoor situated beneath the noose.

  As with the airport, a low fence ringed the refinery. By the entrance to the car park, the gate had been recently reinforced. It stood open, but was guarded by a miserably dehydrated man standing in the shade of a blanket. Two corners were tied to the gate, the other two held up by poles dug into the mineral-rich soil. With obvious reluctance, the sentry trudged from under the blanket’s shadow and into the still-hot sun, making space for the car to drive through.

  The car park was far from crowded. Talya pulled the truck into a spot next to a corporate-blue minibus. From how Talya tensed, Tess could tell she wanted to say something, so, before she could, Tess got out.

  Of the twelve vehicles in the lot, nine were adorned in corporate blue, one in sporty red, but it was the two battered utility trucks that were of interest to Tess. Both had a grassland logo very out of place among the refinery’s steel-forest of metallic pipework. She walked over to the nearest truck, brushing the dust from the logo before turning back to Talya, who’d exited her vehicle, and now stood by the still-open driver’s door.

  “I smell beef,” Tess said. “There’s nothing to feed cattle here, is there? We had the same problem in Canberra. The cattle arrived before we were ready for them. Had to slaughter the lot. Wasted a good deal. The Davenport Downs Cattle Station is about five hundred kilometres north of here, right?”

  Talya glanced back at the guard, who’d reclaimed his spot of shadow by the gate, then returned her gaze to Tess’s badge. “Yes,” Talya said. “Yes it is.”

  “Thank you,” Tess said. “I’ll make my own way from here, but you should wait. I won’t be long.”

  The main entrance was unguarded, and the doors were unlocked. Inside, behind a rounded blue-plastic reception desk, a woman had been watching a tablet until Tess entered. She was dressed in black rather than blue. A shotgun leaned against the wall behind the desk. When she jumped to her feet, Tess saw a holstered gun at her belt, the flap unbuttoned. The uniform was brushed clean, not washed, nor ironed. The hat didn’t fit, and the hair beneath was too long for a roughneck.

  “I’m Commissioner Tess Qwong. I’m here on a mission from the prime minister. I need to speak to the judge, but my plane leaves in twenty minutes.”

  “I… yes, ma’am,” the receptionist said, and hurried to the doors before turning around. “Please wait here. I’ll be… I won’t be long.”

  As she went through, Tess walked over to the row of clean but cheap armchairs. The building’s fans burred, circulating the air, but not chilling it. Of all the places likely to have enough electricity to create an iceberg in this scorched desert, it was surely a natural gas refinery that had its own power station.

  Her eyes fell on the gallows outside, but she turned away, scanning the rest of the room. There were no magazines on the low coffee table, only a spray of prospectuses for prospective investors. But who else would fly out this way? At the airport, she’d seen an RV with an awning, a few tables and chairs. There’d be a better-equipped social club wherever the refinery workers slept, but they’d work their shifts and fly home or to the coast for their R&R. That was before the outbreak, of course.

  With a clunk, the doors swung open, and the receptionist stepped through. “Ma’am, commissioner,” she said. “Please come this way. Please?”

  “Thank you. You’re understaffed?” Tess asked, noting the fear in the receptionist’s eyes, the tremble in her voice. “If you’re doubling-up as a security guard and receptionist, I mean.”

  “We’re… we’re… I…” the woman stammered, a reaction far more illuminating than any words would have been. “It’s in here, ma’am,” she finished instead, pointing at a door labelled Meeting Room A. She opened the door, and followed Tess inside.

  The floor-to-ceiling windows offered a vista only of interest to investors. The curtains had been drawn back, offering a view of giant pipes and a cloudless sky, and providing almost all of the room’s light. With the furniture’s current configuration, the room could seat about thirty, split between six low benches, three on either side of a narrow aisle. At the front of the room, furthest from the door, were two tables covered in black cloth. Behind the large table dominating the centre and rear of the room were the flags of Australia and Queensland. To the left was a smaller table on which was a laptop. To the right, a solitary chair was placed behind a scaffolding and wire enclosure.

  The stale air dripped with terror, but oddly not from the middle-aged woman sitting on the chair behind the scaffolding and wire enclosure. It was a dock. She was a prisoner. The man sitting at the laptop was a clerk. The other man, standing behind the prisoner, was a guard, meaning the woman sitting in front of the flags was th
e judge. Over her white shirt and black suit jacket, she wore a black cloak that was closer to an academic gown than judicial robes.

  “G’day,” Tess said. “Commissioner Tess Qwong, Australian Federal Police. You must be Judge Munsch.” Tess turned to the prisoner. “I know you. You’re Teegan Toppley.”

  “My reputation’s spread far and wide,” the prisoner said.

  “You have interrupted proceedings,” Munsch said.

  “Apologies for that,” Tess said calmly. “But we’re in a rush. Been an outbreak of dysentery at a couple of the refugee camps by the coast. Got to grab some meds from that downed 737 before the bug sweeps along the coast. Apologies again that I won’t be able to stop long enough to enjoy this show.”

  “The administration of justice is not entertainment,” Munsch said.

  Behind Tess, the receptionist shifted from foot to foot. The guard behind the prisoner looked equally nervous. Behind the judge was a second door. A single rather than the double through which Tess had entered, and it was propped open. Possibly to let in some air. Possibly to conceal another guard or two.

  “You knew our plane had landed,” Tess said. “You knew I would come here. You had this ready. A judge. A clerk. A convict. Space for observers, but not for a jury. You’re the judge and jury. Are you the executioner as well? I saw the gallows. It’s hard to miss.”

  “If death is the sentence, I do not shy away from its administration,” Munsch said.

  “My pilot’s name is Mick Dodson,” Tess said. “Don’t know if you’ve heard of him. You’ll have heard of his daughter, Anna Dodson.”

  “The aboriginal politician?” Munsch asked.

  “The Minister for Housing and Agriculture,” Tess said. “I just want to make sure we all know which direction the future’s leaning. You keeping a record of this, mate?” she added, turning to the clerk. “Good. Canberra will want a copy.”

  “So you have come to stop me?” Munsch asked.

  “Ironically, no,” Tess said. She turned to the convict. Teegan Toppley looked utterly different to the photographs taken before her trial in December. Her hair was now mostly grey and ragged, shaved short in prison. Though she had the physique of a runner, not a fighter, behind her narrowed eyes a calculating brain measured angles and distance, waiting to strike.

  “Teegan Toppley,” Tess said. “According to the interview you gave that gullible journalist, you’re forty-six. According to the honest court reporter at your trial in December, you’re fifty-nine. Claimed not to have committed a crime here in Australia since you were twenty, but you’d also not set foot here for two decades until you needed treatment. Cancer, right? And it was a success. After which you donated a hundred and fifty million dollars to charity. That’s what they got you for. Tax evasion.”

  “Just like Capone,” Toppley said, offering a most charming smile which had entranced a nation during the nightly-news updates of her trial.

  “How’d you come to be here?” Tess asked. Toppley wore corporate blue, like the ground-crew at the airport, but with a large PZ199 stencilled on leg and chest.

  “I was aboard a prison transport and here it stopped,” Toppley said. “The how and why is as much a mystery as my original arrest.”

  Tess nodded, and turned to the windows showing a view of dirt and steel. “If I’d been running this place, I’d have put some palm trees out there. I guess the cost of watering them would have been considered profligate by the owners. Or maybe they only prefer plants after they’ve been stuck underground for a million years.” She turned back to the judge. “The mine owners and refinery managers are working with us now. Helping us expand production, creating a stockpile with which we can clothe, feed, and arm the world.”

  “We must all do our part,” Munsch said.

  “Glad you agree,” Tess said. Slowly, she reached into her pocket and took out the envelope. “Communication is difficult. Accessing databases is nearly as tough. Everything stored on the cloud is inaccessible. But we’ve got some local databases. We’ve got some local knowledge thanks to the operation down in Jackson. And we’ve got some witnesses who offered evidence. The pilot of the Timorese freighter and a worker who escaped from here.” She held up one of the sheets of paper. “Your name is Lisa Munsch. You’re a court clerk from Brisbane. Your brother was a roughneck and former union rep. After the outbreak, he flew to Brisbane, collected you and some of your mates, brought you back here. In the intervening weeks, the facility’s manager disappeared.”

  “We searched for her,” Munsch said.

  “I’m not here about that. I’m here about the cattle.”

  “You would have us starve?” Munsch asked. “You send us workers. You don’t send us supplies.”

  “Your brother launched a raid on Davenport Downs. He attacked a convoy of cattle destined for Perth. He died. As did two others of your people, and seventeen workers from the cattle station. But three survived, and we’ve got their statements.”

  “As you say, my brother died,” the judge said. “The surviving members of that raid returned here. They were punished for their deeds.”

  “But you didn’t return the cattle,” Tess said. “You didn’t report the crime. As a result, Davenport Downs sent word by air to the other cattle stations, warning them of murderous rustlers. And as a result of that, five thousand head of cattle were delivered to Canberra a month too early. The canning and processing plants aren’t finished. There’s no feed for the livestock. The cows had to be slaughtered. Some will be eaten. Some frozen. Most will be wasted. In a few months’ time, people will starve because of that waste.”

  “That’s why you are here?” Munsch asked. “The guilty have paid for their crimes. We have the records.”

  “Which you can cite during your own trial,” Tess said. “This is a warrant for your arrest.” She placed the printed sheet on the table in front of the clerk. “In addition to the statement from the survivors of the raid, we’ve evidence from the pilot, and from one of your workers who escaped.”

  “You’re arresting me?” Munsch asked.

  “I’m not arresting you, no,” Tess said. She took the handcuffs from her belt and put them on the desk, next to the arrest warrant, and addressed the clerk. “Tomorrow, a new management team will arrive and take charge of this facility. She can come with me. You can dismantle the gallows. Or it can go the other way.” She turned to face the receptionist. “Whoever you are, whoever you were, you’re no match for the regiment of Special Forces who’re ready and waiting for the order to clear this place out.” She turned to face the guard behind Toppley. “Civilisation might be in disarray, but we’ll not abandon it so easily. It’s your choice.”

  “Judge, jury, and executioner,” Munsch said slowly. “It is so easy for you, isn’t it, Commissioner. You arrest, charge, and walk away with no consideration of what comes next. Yes, I am the judge. Yes, I am the jury as well, because it would be criminally unjust to ask others to take that responsibility. And yes, I am the executioner because it would be unconscionable to ask others to do what I dared not. I take upon me the hard choices so that others do not have to. So that you do not have to.” She stood, and walked around the table. The crude robes covered most of her body, but from the way the suit jacket and shirt hung, Tess doubted the woman wore a holster. The sentry behind the convict, holding his shotgun, had taken a step back. But that could have been to make space between him and Toppley as much as to create distance between him and the judge.

  “You’re right,” Tess said. “Sometimes, yes, it falls upon an individual to make that choice, to take that decision. It has nothing to do with a badge, with a law, but with a far deeper division between what is obviously right and what is manifestly wrong. And once that decision is made, right or wrong, the consequences must be faced.” Tess tapped the clerk’s desk, and stepped back. “So make your choice, or face the consequences tomorrow.”

  “Arrest this woman,” the judge said.

  The receptionist looked at th
e clerk. The clerk looked at the sentry. The sentry looked at the convict, who shook her head and smiled. All the while, the judge stared at Tess and Tess stared at her, arms folded.

  The clerk stood up, and took a step back, away from the desk, indicating he wanted no part in the proceedings. But the receptionist stepped forward, picking up the piece of paper Tess had laid down. She glanced at it, then replaced it, picking up the handcuffs instead.

  “Now arrest her, Nicole,” the judge said.

  “No,” the receptionist said. “She has a warrant from Canberra. If you have any authority, it’s superseded by the government. And if they don’t have any authority, neither do you.”

  “You can’t be serious?” the judge said. “This is the time you develop qualms? I mean, this, now, is the time?”

  “Yes,” the receptionist said. “Hold out your hands, please.”

  The judge looked to the guard, to the clerk, and then back to the receptionist. “You will regret this, Nicole. Without order, people like that woman, Toppley, will come to rule places like this. The weak will be murdered. The strong will kill. There will be no turning back.”

  “Maybe not,” the receptionist said. “But if they send the soldiers in, everyone will die tomorrow.”

  “Very well, Nicole.” The judge held out her hands.

  The receptionist stepped forward, then looked down, turning the handcuffs this way and that, seeking how to operate them.

  “Not like that,” the judge said, stepping forward. “Like—” She grabbed the receptionist’s collar, reaching for her holstered gun, but the judge was clearly as unfamiliar with hand-to-hand combat as Nicole was with handcuffs.

  Even as Tess drew her weapon, the judge hauled the sidearm from Nicole’s belt. Nicole grabbed the judge’s wrist, and both women stepped towards one another, wrestling with the gun. Tess stepped forward even as the sentry levelled his shotgun, but it wasn’t that weapon which discharged.

  As the sound of the gunshot faded, the judge collapsed, blood spreading across her white triangle of shirt. The receptionist stepped back, dropping the gun. Tess holstered her own.