“A twenty-five-seater Isuzu,” she said. “Lime green, matches the Subaru behind it. Might even match the lead car, though that’s too charred to tell. Hire-company vehicles, I think, though they’re a long way from home.”
“But is it damaged?” Mick asked. “We can’t fit twenty-five aboard.”
“Looks fine,” Tess said. “But if it was working, why’d they stop?”
Though flying slow and low, the plane was already overtaking the smoke.
“Yep, it’s a mine,” Mick said. “Looks empty.”
To the south of the temporary runway, beyond a fence, a dozen bright yellow construction vehicles were parked amid a cluster of huts and cabins.
“No lights. No smoke. No people down there,” Tess said. “But no zombies, either. Just around the bus.”
Mick turned back to his radio. “This is the Flying Doctor, can you hear me, over?” He paused, listening. “Nothing. Ground’s sloping towards the mine. I’ll bring her in over the bus, lure the zombies away. We’ll stop about a kilometre from them.”
“I’ll warn our passengers,” Tess said.
Chapter 7 - Trapped in the Never-Ever-Again
Humeburn, Queensland
The cockpit shook. The wings shuddered. The wheels squealed as the plane hit the ground heavy and hard. From above, the ribbon of road had appeared as smooth as silk, but the landing gear found every bump during the sharp deceleration. Even as the plane rocked and swerved, Tess unbuckled her belt for the second time in five minutes. This time, before going back into the cabin, she opened the locker at the rear of the cockpit.
During the flight, and with the convicts in the back, she’d worn her holstered sidearm. For what lay ahead, she’d need one of the two HK416 assault rifles. Before leaving Broken Hill, Captain Hawker of the SASR had given them to Tess and Mick. In part, it was an apology from the soldier for not having stopped the cartel gangsters. But the rifles, having belonged to two deceased soldiers, were also a reminder to the police officer, and ultimately to Mick’s daughter, of those who’d been sacrificed during the outback skirmish.
On reaching Canberra, Mick had taken to ostentatiously carrying his rifle with him as a prompt to others that he possessed a seniority not entirely based on age. When she learned how few police officers remained in the capital, Tess, just as ostentatiously, wore her badge instead, leaving the rifle at the airfield. When she’d been dragooned onto Canberra’s walls, she’d come to regret it. Now, after the gas refinery, the policy required revision.
Loading the rifle, she picked up two spare magazines, but pocketed the suppressor rather than attaching it. They knew zombies followed sound, and right now, that’s what she wanted.
“You letting us out or what?” Stevie asked as she made her way through the cabin.
“Stay put, stay quiet,” Tess said, unclipping the fire extinguisher from the bracket by the door. “We’ll be back in the air in thirty minutes.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Stevie said. “And I never got my free drink.”
“Dr Dodson will give you some water once he’s turned the plane,” Tess said. “But let me be as clear as I was up at the Durham refinery. That’s Mick Dodson, the father of a cabinet minister. This rifle was a gift from the SAS.” She tapped the stock. “And they’re waiting for us at the coast because, if things had worked out differently in Durham, they would have gone in to clean it up. If you do anything stupid, you’ll have the SAS hunting you through the outback.”
“We understand,” Toppley said. “And we shall sit quietly, meekly awaiting your return.”
Doubt rising, Tess opened the door. Quietly cursing the engineer who’d replaced the steps with a ramp, she clambered down. The engines still burred, swirling a dust storm across the runway-road. Head bowed, she jogged away from the plane, to the clearer air behind and beyond.
After fifty metres, and a protest from her hip, she slowed the run to a walk. She was nearly a kilometre from the bus and the undead, though some of the figures were already moving towards her. Rule three, zombies couldn’t run, so as she quick-stepped forward, she assessed the battleground.
The road sloped downward towards the mine for which this runway-road had been built. Designed to last a year or two and a few dozen flights, it was already in need of resurfacing. Even so, it would have required considerable effort and expense. In total, five kilometres had been paved. Divide that by two on the assumption that a plane wouldn’t turn around once it had landed, and it was still more than all but the heaviest freight planes would need. And much wider. Wider than most highways, with room for eight lanes of car-width traffic, though without any lane markings. From the air, the runway-road didn’t extend to the mine, nor did it continue far out into the bush.
To the east and west, hillocks and humps, and a few lonely mulgas, offered some cover, but zombies didn’t hide. The engines would lure them to the plane, as was the case with the two walking-corpses to the east. A third staggered up from a dried creek. A hundred metres apart, but with the closest well over a kilometre away, they were a problem for later.
Turning her walk into a jog, she covered half a kilometre three times as quickly as the zombies approaching from the bus. Putting down the extinguisher, she raised the rifle and took the measure of her foe. Three women, one man, and they weren’t miners. With their faces distorted by feral rage, covered in gore and wind-borne dust, it was impossible to guess their age. But they weren’t young. They weren’t children from aboard the bus. City-dwellers? Possibly. The passengers from the cars? Maybe. Behind those four, another two had detached themselves from the bus. That still left over a dozen beating at the thin metal and thinner windows. Had that been a scream from inside?
Tess raised the rifle, braced her feet, and fired. A single shot, another, another. Six shots to kill the four nearest. She shifted aim to the two behind, but they weren’t close enough. Not yet.
Zombies couldn’t run. Mick had declared it a rule, while Dr Avalon had decreed it impossible. Tess wasn’t sure how much trust to place in the recently arrived Canadian scientist, but she’d not seen any running zombies. Not in Broken Hill, not around Canberra. They didn’t think. They couldn’t use tools or weapons. They existed only to spread and infect. A walking test tube to contain the virus was how Avalon had described them, the words relayed to Tess second-hand via Anna after the Canadian’s surprise appearance.
And now they were close enough. Tess opened fire. Five measured shots, and the zombies fell. Tess picked up the extinguisher and walked on. Another seven had detached themselves from the bus. After thirty metres she stopped, taking aim. Her target: another civilian. The next wore the reinforced work clothes of a miner. She focused on the clothing, not on the faces. Not on how, one after another, they walked into gunfire, oblivious to death. Another seven down, thirteen bullets expended; since Broken Hill, there’d been plenty of practice. She ejected the magazine, inserted a fresh, picked up the extinguisher, and walked on.
Rifles and patience and wide-open spaces, that was how they would rid the world of the undead. How General Yoon was neutralising them in Canada. And it was why there might be battles, but this wasn’t a war. No enemy came willingly to the slaughter. Only unthinking creatures. She just wished they didn’t look like people. She followed the gently sloping road down the shallow hill, towards the bus, stopping twice more to shoot one, then another.
Two were by the bus’s door, beating and kicking, smashing their arms against the glass. Only two?
Raising the rifle one-handed, she gave the car behind the bus a wide berth. The passenger in the rear seat was dead, a screwdriver through her undead eye. The other seats were empty, and she supposed their previous occupants were now among those she’d just shot.
By the time she was close enough to see the desperate fear on the small faces of the passengers inside the bus, three zombies were close to the door. Two wore mining clothes, one in active-wear more suited to a spin-class than the eternal grind of survi
val. All three were beating and clawing against the thin metal, leaving bloody smears as they smashed their hands to pulp.
Tess fired. Shifting position, to stand flush against the chassis to avoid a miss or ricochet travelling straight through the bus’s thin walls, she fired again. Again. She raised a warning hand to deter the man who’d come to the door from opening it. As she did, she saw what little remained of the shredded front tyre, and what remained of the monster it had driven over. The torn tyre was planted firmly on the zombie’s chest, the organs surely crushed, but its gravel-scraped head, abraded of almost all skin and hair, knocked against the road as it craned and twisted its neck. She raised the rifle and fired one last bullet before returning to the extinguisher. Rifle raised one-handed, she walked down to the still smouldering car, some thirty metres ahead. Not as close to the bus as she’d thought, and not the imminent threat she’d assumed.
The fire had begun in a gym bag thrown through the broken rear window. Around it were the smoke-stained remains of plastic jars and glass bottles. Roadside salvage, she supposed. She slung the rifle, and sprayed the extinguisher over the bag, then the back of the car, before turning her attention to the interior.
The car doors were closed. Only one charred skeleton was inside, in the driver’s seat, a knife in its neck, another in its eye. She sprayed the engine and set the extinguisher down before backing up a pace, turning a slow circle, then crouching to check beneath the vehicles. After motioning again that the bus’s passengers should wait where they were, she looked down the slope, towards the fenced mining compound a further four hundred metres away.
The gate sparkled while the fence, covered in rust, didn’t even gleam. Inside were a handful of very old cabins, a score of smaller prefab huts, and the row of cartoon-yellow construction vehicles. But no undead. No living people either.
A distant crack came from closer to the plane. Another. A third. She walked a looping circle off the road and onto the dirt. In the distance, Mick stood by the Beechcraft’s wing, his rifle raised. Other than him, and inside the bus, she saw no movement. Mick had shot the three approaching undead, meaning the immediate threat was vanquished. But the solution to one problem brought the next into clearer focus.
The bus’s front tyres were ruined. The two cars were worse than junk. Even from here, she could make out the bullet holes in the helicopter, not that it was large enough for everyone, and not that she knew how to fly it.
The bus door slid open. The man on the steps held a cricket bat in his hands, and a mountain of responsibility on his shoulders. Long shirt, jeans, an old belt, worn sneakers, cheap wedding band, broken watch: not a miner, nor a soldier, and not at all dressed for the outback.
“G’day,” Tess said. “I’m Police Commissioner Tess Qwong, out of Canberra. My pilot’s a flying doctor. What happened here?”
“Your pilot’s a doctor?” the man said, relief adding a tremor to his words. “Please, you’ve got to help. It’s my son.”
“He’s sick?” she asked.
“He’s dying.”
She stepped up into the bus, and into a swarm of children, all wearing matching red and white tracksuits.
“Everyone move back,” Tess said. “In your seats, kids. Is it just your son that’s crook? Everyone else okay?”
She scanned the faces looking at her. Nine of them belonged to children around ten years old, a roughly even mix of boys and girls. A tenth child, about the same age, unconscious, was cradled in the lap of a fear-worn woman, the only other adult on the bus.
“Everyone’s okay except for Brendon,” the eleventh child said. A girl, in her early teens, her hair was cut too short for the emerald and silver clip above her ear. But that clip matched the engagement ring on the older woman’s finger. Which, no doubt, made the woman her mother, though clearly not of every child aboard the bus.
“Brendon?” Tess asked. “Do you know what’s wrong with him?”
“Diabetic shock,” the father said.
“We don’t know,” the mother said. “He’s not diabetic. But he wasn’t bitten so it isn’t that. He just collapsed this morning.”
When Tess had seen the small faces at the window, and the ruined tyre, she knew a hard choice was ahead of her. Looking at the pale boy with the already blue lips, it was no choice at all.
“We’re walking up to the plane,” she said, straightening. “All of us, together. Leave everything here. No bags. Ma’am, what’s your name?”
“Molly Birdwood,” she said.
“Can you carry your son? Sir, what’s your name?”
“Clarke.”
“Clarke, you’re last off the bus. I’m going first.” She turned to the teenage girl who’d spoken. “You’re going second. What’s your name?”
“Shannon,” the girl said.
“Hi, Shannon, I’m Tess. I’ll walk to the edge of the road. When I call, you follow, bring this girl with you.” She pointed to the girl sitting on the next seat. “Everyone else, from the front, come outside in pairs, holding hands. When we’re outside, we’ll walk to the plane. No one runs unless I say. Got it?” If anything, they looked even more terrified, but it was a new world for everyone. “Molly, you come last. Clarke, you follow. Everyone ready!”
Not waiting for an answer, or for more fear to set in, Tess jumped back outside. The road was still clear, as was the bush. Nothing had appeared inside the gated mining compound, nor between them and the plane.
“Shannon!” Tess called. “Come on!”
In under a minute, she’d hustled the children and parents outside and onto the red-dirt verge. She could see Mick, rifle in hand, his head turning from them back to the open cabin door. If Toppley wanted to steal the plane, now was the time, and if the notorious crook knew what was about to happen, she very well might.
“Let’s pick up our pace,” Tess said. She turned to the father. “What happened here, Clarke?”
“We were trying to get to the coast,” he said. “We came from a cattle station about… I don’t know how far away. About a day’s drive.”
“You’re a stockman?”
“No. We lived in Townsville, but Molly’s sister runs the hotel in Tambo. We went there after the news of the outbreak. We were going there anyway,” he added, defensively. “We’d planned the trip for months. We were there a day when the police evacuated us to the cattle station. A couple of days ago, they said they were moving the children. Molly and I, because we’ve got Brendon and Shannon, we were given responsibility for these kids, too.”
“Did they say where they were moving you?” she asked. “Tasmania?”
“Brissy,” he said.
“Good news for you then,” Tess said. “Brisbane’s close to where we’re heading. But if you were trying to reach the coast, how d’you end up here?”
“We got lost,” he said. “It was one breakdown after another. Last night, they came at midnight. Hundreds of them. Zombies,” he added. “We held them off until dawn. Mostly. That’s when we fled. We split up. Driving in different directions. The rendezvous was a diesel-stop about fifty kilometres that way.” He waved vaguely at the open expanse beyond the runway-road. “It was full of the undead. We kept driving. The road became a track, and then we saw the sign warning about planes. I thought we’d find an airport, but we found this.”
“And what about the people in the car?” Tess asked. “How’d they get infected?”
“At the diesel-stop,” Clarke said. “Tony went looting.”
“He was in one of the cars?”
“In front,” Clarke said. “The car stopped. I guess the fire started by accident. We were waiting for the smoke to clear, but the zombies came. We tried to drive out, and tore up the wheels. The others, they died one by one.”
“I think someone in the car behind was infected, too,” Tess said, glancing over at Clarke to get his reaction.
“Really?” he asked, and sounded genuinely shocked. “I didn’t know. I mean, I guessed. I… it all happened so qui
ckly.”
“How long since your mate Tony turned?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Two hours. Maybe three.”
“And you came along that dirt track,” she asked, pointing beyond the plane.
“Yes.”
Rule three, zombies couldn’t run. But they didn’t tire, either. They didn’t stop. Three hours worked out at fifteen kilometres, but she’d call it ten. Any zombies within ten kilometres, and close enough to the road to have heard this convoy pass, would have reached them by now. Similarly, any undead inside the mining compound would have made their way to the gate. It wasn’t proof they were safe, the three zombies Mick had shot told her that, but it was close enough.
She had another few questions for the man, more details about the cattle station, and why they were travelling by road not air, but they were approaching the plane, and Mick was approaching them.
“The kid’s crook,” Tess said, pointing to Molly and Brendon.
“Did he report any pain?” Mick asked. “Let’s put him down in the shadow of the wing.”
“He said he was dizzy,” Molly said, as Mick took the boy from her arms.
“When was that?” Mick asked.
“A couple of hours ago,” Molly said.
“Four hours twenty minutes,” the teenager, Shannon, said, holding up her wristwatch. “He’s been unconscious for three hours and ten minutes.”
“We thought…” Molly began. “For a while we thought he might have been infected. By them. But he wasn’t bitten. It’s not that, right?”
“No.” Mick smiled as he lifted one closed eyelid, then another. “He’ll be fine. Before dark, we’ll be at a hospital. A couple of pills, a good meal, and a better sleep, and he’ll snap around faster than a croc in a treadmill. The rest of you okay?” he added, turning to the other, terrified, children. “Tess, a word?”
They walked back towards the plane’s open door.
Life Goes On | Book 3 | While The Lights Are On [Surviving The Evacuation] Page 8