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

by Tayell, Frank

  Behind the desk, the room was divided in two with a heavy and locked door leading to a medical room. But that door had an equally thick plastic window, and through it, she saw the corpse. Buzzing with flies, lying on the solitary cot-bed, one leg and both wrists secured with cord, a chisel through his eye. Meat-ants streamed to the body in a there-and-back double-column from a gap in the wall. In a week, only bones would remain. But it begged the question of what the ants had been eating before.

  Back in the office, the radio sat on a table of its own behind the desk, and was partially disassembled. It was a minor frustration, but offset by the map on which it stood. A larger-scale map of Queensland showed her where the exploration was centred, and that was forty kilometres north of the nearest decent road. This wasn’t just the never-never; it was the never-ever-again.

  The generator was in a small cabin adjacent to the shower block. The reservoir was dry. The main fuel tank was empty, too, with only a trio of small fuel cans scattered beneath a large and otherwise empty rack.

  Outside, she followed the rutted track beyond the temporary huts, through the ruins of more, older, shacks, on and downward. The dirt verge grew into an embankment, then into the slope of a hill, while the track became a snaking canyon covered in rock and scree fallen from both of the increasingly vertical sides. She was about to turn back when, low to the ground, she caught movement. Raising the rifle as she spun, she quickly took her finger off the trigger as a furry, large-eared, long-nosed, half-metre-long marsupial paused, tense, eyes fixed on Tess.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you,” Tess said, but even as she spoke, the animal darted along the path, disappearing among the ruined buildings behind her.

  Tess found herself smiling. That was something to tell Mick, that she’d seen a nearly extinct bilby. Her smile froze as, from the direction the animal had run, came a metallic click and clatter. Rifled raised, she walked on, slowly following the canyon-road until, with no warning, beyond a bend, it opened into an even deeper gorge running across her path. Ten metres wide and forty metres deep, it was crossed by a steel-plate suspension bridge. Made in sections and assembled on-site, it had replaced the older, iron-framed, wooden bridge, which lay at the bottom of the gorge.

  Slowly, she reached for the pouch on her belt, and extracted the suppressor.

  The bridge had a gate on either end, one metre high, secured with a simple latch.

  She screwed the suppressor onto the barrel.

  With no barrier running along the lip of the gorge, the gate must have come as an insurance-required standard fitting for the bridge. It hadn’t stopped the zombies falling down to the gorge below where, now, they writhed, limbs broken, skin punctured, oozing dark gore onto jagged boulders. But on the far side of the bridge was the reason the rabbit-eared bandicoot had been running for its life. Three zombies pushed on the gate at the far end of the bridge. A man and a woman in heavy-duty denim, and another woman in pink culottes and a thin-strapped tank top. The gate rattled as they pushed onward, arms reaching across the distance, beckoning for Tess to join them. Instead, she sent a bullet.

  Three shots whispered from the suppressed barrel, then a fourth as the third missed, only ripping away the ear of the undead man. She shifted aim to the crippled zombies in the gorge below, but held her fire. They weren’t a threat and ammunition was limited. She checked the gate was secure, then headed back through the canyon, and to the cabin, with a better idea of what had occurred here.

  Teegan Toppley sat on the hood of one of the grey utility vehicles, an axe handle across her knees.

  “Are you thinking of driving out of here?” Tess asked while slinging the rifle.

  “Drive where, Commissioner?” Toppley asked. “In none of my future plans did I see myself as a modern-day Ned Kelly. Or, considering the events of the last three weeks, a real-life Road Warrior. Of course, you’re the one with the badge. And the keys, I assume?”

  “If you don’t want to drive out of here, why are you asking?”

  “Because it’s always wise to have a plan-B, Commissioner,” Toppley said. “A woman told me that once, just after I robbed her.”

  “After you robbed her?”

  “She caught me in the act. Otherwise, how would she have given me such wise words of wisdom?” Toppley smiled, and jumped down. “I can fly a plane, though not well, and I haven’t tried for years. But I understand how debris on a runway can turn a landing into a crash. I saw your pilot drag that zombie off the road. How many corpses would make a landing impossible? How will your pilot know, if he arrives before the sun has properly risen?”

  Tess pulled out the keys she’d taken from the office. “How will he know? He picked up the distress call from the bus’s radio. We can use that to warn him off, though it can only transmit, not receive. I’d hoped to use the miners’ radio, but it’s been dismantled. Looks as if it broke weeks ago. To clear the runway, we’ve got that bulldozer.”

  “And a plan-B?” Toppley asked.

  “These utes,” Tess said, throwing a set of keys to Toppley. “Check the tank on that one.” She took the other set herself, opened the door, and turned the ignition. “This one could make fifty kilometres, give or take.”

  “This will splutter to a stand-still after twenty,” Toppley said. “Split the difference, and from what Mrs Birdwood said, we’ll reach the diesel-stop where so many of her friends were infected.”

  “The track beyond the runway-road is the only way out of here,” Tess said. “In the other direction, there’s a gorge, a bridge, and the undead, mostly at the bottom of a creek. The sides are too steep for them to be a threat. Beyond the bridge are the mine-works. According to a map I found in the office, they were exploring for coal.”

  “Coal?” Toppley asked. “Where’s the dust, the slag, the smell? Those are the wrong type of machines.”

  Tess shrugged. “Does it matter? We’ve enough fuel to reach the diesel-stop where Molly was attacked this morning, but that’s about as far as we’d get before dark. If we syphon the fuel from those excavators and dumper-trucks, we’ll have enough to get much further. Maybe not to the coast, but enough to follow the track to a road and that to a larger one, and to a working mine or cattle station. That’s our plan-B for tomorrow, if the plane can’t land.”

  “Agreed,” Toppley said as if it had only been a suggestion. “I’ll gather the fuel.”

  “We’ll need to keep some diesel for the site’s generator,” Tess said. “But there are empty fuel cans in the generator room. Tubing and rags there, too.”

  “Indeed, and some are to be found much closer than that,” Toppley said, pointing at the ground.

  Tess took a cautious, and wide, step away from the truck. In the dirt, near the mobile crane-and-winch, lay a long length of rubber hose. “Someone’s beaten us to it,” Tess said. “We might have to make do with what fuel’s in the utes.”

  Toppley shrugged. “I’ve been in worse situations,” she said. “This morning, for example. Thank you for saving my life, Commissioner. I won’t forget it.”

  Tess nodded. “I was there because of a raid on a cattle station. We didn’t know about the executions.”

  “Nevertheless, I am grateful.”

  “How did you find yourself at the judge’s less than tender mercy?” Tess asked.

  “Unintentionally,” Toppley said. “Along with my fellow guests at the correctional facility south of Darwin, I was taken to the airport and put to work. We dug, though I couldn’t tell you why, though my theory is we were constructing an escape tunnel to Papua or something as equally unachievable. Civilians, convicts, it made no difference who we’d been as long as we dug.”

  “At the airport?” Tess asked, adding that to her mental list of things to investigate after she’d served the other two warrants. “So how did you get from Darwin to Durham?”

  “Five days ago, we were gathered onto coaches and driven south to the refinery. With no warning, no explanation, we were issued with the clothing, rega
rdless of who we’d been before, what our crimes were. Whether there had even been any crime. The following day, the judge began her trials. You’ll want to know why she was executing us. There is no good reason, though from an overheard word or three, someone aboard the first coach witnessed something as we arrived. Or was assumed to have witnessed something.”

  “You were witnesses, being eliminated?” Tess asked.

  “Essentially,” Toppley said. “Perhaps I’m wrong, but that is what I choose to believe since it is more rational than the alternative. Michaela Bellamy was in prison for vandalism during a political protest in which she refused to identify her co-revolutionaries.”

  “The woman with glasses? She doesn’t look the type.”

  “The protest was over the closure of a library,” Toppley said. “I believe she took the fall for a group of teenage bibliophiles.”

  “Ah. What about the grey-haired bloke, PZ209?”

  “I don’t remember him being at the airport, and certainly not in the detention centre, but I’ve seen him before somewhere.”

  “In your past life?” Tess asked. “He’s a mercenary?”

  “Perhaps,” Toppley said. “It’s Stevie Morsten and Kyle Stokes who concern me. But you know them?”

  “I know Stevie,” Tess said.

  “He says you’re infatuated with him.”

  “That’s a yarn lying so heavy it’ll smother the truth,” Tess said. “We grew up in the same town, and I’ve been knocking him down ever since we were kids and locking him up ever since I was a cop.”

  “Watch him,” Toppley said. “And I shall find fuel for our plan-B.”

  “Keep an eye out for the undead,” Tess said.

  “Oh, indeed, Commissioner,” Toppley said, knocking the axe-handle against her leg. “But what is life without a little risk?”

  Chapter 9 - Million Dollar Rocks

  Humeburn, Queensland

  As Tess approached the large cabin, the door opened, and PZ209 stepped out, a hammer in his hand, four long shelves under his arm.

  “Are you building a deck, mate?” Tess asked.

  The convict stared at her, not glaring, not even angry, but calculating. “I’m barricading the windows.”

  “Your accent, you’re American?” she asked, realising she’d not heard him speak before.

  “Canadian,” he said.

  “You’re a tourist?” she asked.

  He tapped the hammer against the number stencilled on his leg. “I’m a convict,” he said.

  “Historically, that’s a fast-track to citizenship,” she said with a smile he didn’t reciprocate. “Don’t bother with the windows. We won’t be spending our night here. Come inside, and I’ll tell everyone the plan.”

  With half the windows by the dartboard broken and covered months ago, and with the generator still off, very little light found its way inside. But enough forced its way through the cracked timbers and dirt-veined windows for her to see the shotgun was missing from where she’d left it by the door. The bottle of whisky was gone from the counter doing duty as a bar. Behind the bar, inside the artificially walled-off kitchen area, Shannon and Michaela were sorting through the cupboards and crates for crockery and food, while Molly had folded up the chairs and was now moving the tables in front of the windows.

  Stevie and Kyle had found a crate of beer, which, along with their feet, they’d planted on the table near the dark TV. The men sat in two of the lawn chairs, to which the miners had glued foam padding on arms and the back.

  “It’s the princess,” Stevie said, waving his half-drunk bottle at her. “Fancy a stubby? We can spare one for royalty. If you ask nice.”

  Tess ignored him and walked over to the kitchen, while Molly walked over to her.

  “I poured away the whisky,” Molly whispered. “But they found the beer. As soon as they did…” She waved at the pair of men. “And if they keep drinking like that…” Again she trailed off as her daughter, and Michaela, came to stand on the other side of the high shelves doing double duty as a counter.

  “You said there’s a plan,” PZ209 said.

  “Has anyone heard of General Yoon?” Tess asked.

  “Who’s he?” Shannon asked.

  “She’s leading the American army in Canada,” Tess said. “Last I heard, they’d reached the Saint Lawrence River, and were about to march south, cross the border, and begin securing the United States. Since we lost contact with their most recent president, she’s running all of North America. Those parts over which we humans have control.”

  “A sheila as a general? No wonder the world’s spinning backwards,” Stevie muttered.

  “She’s been so successful, that she’s no longer taking new recruits,” Tess said, ignoring Stevie. “She sent us a message asking for guns, for ammo, and for planes to move the refugees back behind her front line, but it’s advancing faster than we can organise an airlift. She’s using construction machines as tanks. Diggers, tractors, giant crane platforms. We’ll copy a page from her playbook and spend the night on top of that bulldozer.”

  “Outside? In the open?” Stevie asked, pushing on the arms of the chair as he engaged in the monstrous effort to stand.

  “Are you sure that’s safe?” Molly asked.

  “Far safer than staying in here with only an inch of rotten wood as our walls,” Tess said. “A last stand in a rickety cabin is for the movies, and life isn’t like a film.”

  “No one gets a post-credit scene, eh?” PZ209 said, his lips curling in what was almost a smile.

  “I was going to say you can’t go online to find out how it ends,” Tess said. “An undead hand could easily smash through those walls. Or the floor.” Everyone looked down, and took an involuntary step back. “But the dozer is too big to be knocked over,” Tess continued. “It’s too bulky to be damaged, too high for the zombies to reach us. Shannon can sleep inside the cab. The rest of us will need blankets or coats, but we can get those from the huts, and it won’t be a cold night. We’ll want shovels, too. Anything with a long handle, to push away the undead.”

  “Why not shoot them?” Michaela asked.

  “We’ll keep the bullets in case we’ve got to clear the runway tomorrow morning,” Tess said. “Though I’d prefer using the bulldozer. Dr Dodson will return at dawn, but that road must be clear of debris to be used as a runway. Again, the bulldozer is perfect for that. But there is a chance Mick’s delayed. Bad weather on the coast might leave us stranded here longer than we have water for.”

  “Didn’t you bring any?” Stevie asked, finding a new issue in which to shove his wedge.

  “Quiet,” PZ209 growled. “Let her finish.”

  “How much water do we have?” Tess asked, turning to Molly.

  “Three cups each,” Molly said. “But there’s none coming out of the taps.”

  “The water reservoir is empty,” Tess said. “I found the tank near the shower block. It’s the same with the fuel. Whoever was here before us drained both. Any joy finding tucker?”

  “D’you like Vegemite?” Shannon asked.

  “That slop?” Stevie growled. “That ain’t food.”

  “Love it,” Tess said.

  “Yeah, it’s ace, isn’t it?” Shannon said.

  “There’s goulash too,” Molly added. “A crate of twenty tins, each half a kilo. But that’s it.”

  “We’ll heat up a batch after Toppley turns the generator on,” Tess said. “After we’ve eaten, we’ll board the bulldozer, but leave the generator running tonight. Zombies follow sound. That’s rule four. So if they get through the fence, they’ll head to the generator, not to us, but we’ll have enough lights we can keep an eye on them.”

  “And if the plane doesn’t land tomorrow, we’ll drive to the coast?” Michaela asked.

  “In the two utes,” Tess said. “I’ll park them next to the bus. We’ll use the dozer to clear a path, and to buy us a bit of distance, then jump in those, and drive to safety. We’ll need some paint, too. At each ju
nction, we’ll paint an arrow to show which road we’ve taken, large enough to be visible from the air. But we’ll probably reach civilisation before Mick finds us. Molly and Shannon, you’re on dinner-duty. Michaela, right?”

  “Michaela Bellamy, yes,” the quiet woman said, then jumped as the lights flickered on, the empty fridge’s motor sputtered, and the corner-fan began to whir.

  “Looks like Toppley got the generator working,” Tess said. “You’re from Darwin, Michaela?”

  “And glad not to be there anymore,” she said.

  “We need tools. Anything with a long handle,” Tess said. “Can you take a look in those storerooms at the back, grab as many as you can find.”

  “I’ll help you,” PZ209 said.

  Tess turned to Stevie and Kyle. “Jackets and blankets,” she said. “You’ll find them in the cabins behind the construction equipment.”

  “I bet you’d find them there, too,” Stevie said.

  The door opened, and Toppley walked in, but dressed in jeans and boots, a shirt, and a reinforced thigh-length beige coat with exterior padding on shoulders and forearms. “There’s a zombie on the road,” she said. “About two kilometres out, but heading this way. Ah, but isn’t electricity a wonderful thing.” She smiled, and reached into the coat’s pocket. “And speaking of wonderful, I learned half the truth of what they were digging for.”

  “The maps said coal,” Tess said.

  “In the office, yes,” Toppley said. “But digging for coal usually produces coal dust. There’s a lack of it here. No, it was opal.” She held up a stone the length of her finger, and nearly as wide. As dark as the expanse between the stars, the stone had iridescent veins, which shimmered as they caught the light. “Black opal.”

  “Is it valuable?” PZ209 asked.

  “It’s beautiful,” Shannon said.

  “Here,” Toppley said, and tossed the uncut gem to the girl. “When cut, that one is probably worth a million dollars.”