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

by Tayell, Frank

  Indulging in the luxury of a wash in the utilitarian bathroom, she stared at herself in the mirror. She certainly didn’t look the part of a cabinet minister. Maybe she should have gone upstairs. The clothes in her office were all smart-and-severe outfits in case she had to appear on the national television programme. Which someone should do soon. Very soon. Before radio rumours initiated a panic. Not her, but also not the prime minister.

  Since her appointment, Bronwyn Wilson had been a broken reed, drowning under the flood of bad news. Gone was the self-assured political veteran, replaced by a walking bundle of uncomprehending indecision. Erin Vaughn would be a competent and reassuring replacement. Or maybe Ian Lignatiev, but only if he could be persuaded to swap his uniform for a suit. Ian or Erin, but what should they say? Perhaps the words didn’t matter as much as showing that the government, increasingly reduced, was still here.

  She grabbed a set of clothes for Leo, and made her way back into the command centre, where, wonderfully and unexpectedly, a map of the world now illuminated the large wall.

  “You got the big-screen working!” Anna said.

  “Not quite,” Smilovitz said, tapping at a tablet. “Think of the map as the screensaver. There’s no input yet.” He put the laptop down and grabbed a toolbox. “But give me a half hour, and I’ll show you the world. Or some of it.”

  “Where are the other engineers?” Anna asked, realising that most of them had gone and Dr Smilovitz appeared to be working alone. One sentry guarded the door, while four others sat at workstations, headphones on, hand-scribing what they heard. Otherwise, and other than the PM in the War Room, the C.O.M.S. was empty.

  “They weren’t engineers, and they weren’t helping,” Smilovitz said. “What’s the name of the guy in uniform?”

  “Ian. Ian Lignatiev, he’s the Minister for Defence.”

  “Right, he sent some to hunt for that zombie, and took the rest with him. His… I’m guessing it’s his wife?”

  “Erin Vaughn, the attorney general. They’re not married. Well, not to each other, but yes, they’re a couple. Worst-kept secret in the A.C.T.”

  “She said something about going to a radio station. I guess to put out a statement.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief,” Anna said. “I was just thinking someone needed to do that.”

  “Right, but why go to a radio station?” Smilovitz asked. “Don’t you guys have a press room upstairs?”

  Anna waved her hands to take in the exposed wires. “Fixing that will be your next job, after you’ve repaired all this. You really don’t need any help?”

  “No offence, but people mucking about with circuits they don’t understand is how you got into this mess in the first place.” He pointed to the four people listening to headphones, and writing on notepads. “I’ve got those four transcribing radio reports. We’re noting times and locations, and getting a feel for who is still trying to talk to us. From the places that aren’t, we’ll learn the boundaries of the EMP. Data should be coming online in about ten minutes. I could use some analysts in the next few hours.”

  “Like the grad students you had at the university?”

  “They’d do, sure. For a start. More would be better. Mel is exactly the woman we need now. She knows the academics, and they’ll know whom to enlist. But right now I need to finish this.”

  “I’ll fetch her and the others, and Dr Avalon,” she said. Halfway to the door, Oswald Owen sauntered over.

  “It’s like being a vegan at the corporate barbie,” O.O. said. “You’ve nothing to do, but you can’t really leave.”

  “If you want to go, no one will stop you,” Anna said.

  “Nah, because everyone arrived together on the company bus,” he said, developing his metaphor. “But there’ll be clearing up to do soon. I always was a dab hand with a broom.”

  “That I’d like to see,” she said. “But considering the circumstances, a shovel would be more appropriate.”

  “Ha!” he barked. “I knew you were hiding a sense of humour somewhere.”

  She’d been serious, not joking, but just nodded, suspecting the man was already drunk. Thinking Oswald, at least, wasn’t making the situation worse, she headed through the airlock, and upstairs. While she couldn’t protect herself from a nuclear detonation overhead, she didn’t want to spend her last few minutes trapped in an elevator disabled by an EMP.

  Outside, the sun had risen, and the black-clad Special Forces had gone. But two familiar figures were arguing with the trio of camouflaged conscripts refusing them entry. One was her assistant, Hoa Nguyen. The other, she’d known all her life.

  “Dad!” Anna said, hugging her father. “Oh, Dad, I’m so glad to see you but we’ve had some cataclysmic news.”

  “I don’t like to add to it,” Mick said. “But Tess and me were flying over the coast a few hours ago, just after dawn. Yesterday, when we reached the natural gas refinery, we found the lady running the place had built a gallows. We took custody of the prisoners scheduled for their last dance, but as we were flying to the coast, we picked up a distress call. Bunch of kids, mostly, trapped near a new mine. I left Tess and the convicts, took the kids, flew to the refugee camp, switched planes, grabbed Captain Bruce Hawker of the SASR, and returned for Tess. We were above the coast at dawn.” He laid his hand on her shoulder, while his lips moved silently as he searched for a way to soften his words. With a shake of his head, he gave up. “A tsunami has swamped the refugee camps.”

  “A tsunami? I… oh. Where?” Anna asked.

  “We reached the coast near Ocean Shores and flew south to Ballina, but the runway had been wrecked before the wave arrived. Told the planes with sufficient fuel to head to the west coast, and led the rest here.”

  “An hour after dawn?” Anna asked, glancing at the sky. “What time is it?”

  “That was two and a half hours ago,” Mick said. “Maybe two hours forty minutes. We were travelling at nine-fifty kilometres an hour with a favourable tail wind. I upgraded to a C-17,” he added. “Now there’s a yarn, longer than we have time for.”

  “It’s later than I realised,” Anna said, again glancing at the sky, but then turned her gaze to a lamp above the footpath which, despite the rising sun, hadn’t been switched off. “But the lights are still on. Captain Hawker is at the airport? And Tess is there, too?”

  “And a few civilians, pilots, and ground-crew,” Mick said. “Some refugees from the Pacific who were aboard the planes which followed me back. I’ve put them in quarantine. They’re being watched.”

  “Quarantine, of course. And how many planes are there, Dad? How much fuel?”

  “Depends how far you want us to go. But I can guess,” he added. “You want me to return to the coast?”

  Anna turned to Hoa who, up until now, had remained silent but listening. “We still don’t know precisely what’s happened, but it’s bad. Very bad. We think thousands of nuclear warheads were detonated together in the remote Pacific. Don’t ask me why, or where. Not yet. But that must have caused the wave. We have to mount a rescue operation and there’s no point trying to do it from inside the Bunker.”

  “Ma’am?” Hoa asked. “Are things… okay down there?”

  “They’re chaotic,” Anna said. “The same principle applies as before. People must be transported to somewhere they won’t be at risk of infection, dehydration, or starvation. Hoa, you’ll have to adapt our plans for overseas refugees. Dad, we need to know how bad the damage is on the coast. And on the west and north coasts, too. Can you send pilots to find out? We’ll need runways so we can ferry the people out by air, and then… by then, by tomorrow, we’ll have a better idea of what just happened.”

  “No worries,” Mick said. “I can manage that. Can you manage everything here?”

  “I’ll have to,” Anna said.

  “Be careful, Anna. Remember rule one,” her father said.

  “Same to you,” she said, and went back inside.

  In the command centre, Dr Smilovitz fin
ger-pecked at a tablet until he saw her enter. He hurried to the four transcribing conscripts, taking their notepads, and met her halfway to the War Room.

  “I’m ready to give you a preliminary briefing,” he said.

  “Go on then,” O.O. said, slinking out of the shadows. “What’s the damage report?”

  “It’s worse than you think,” Anna said. “I’ve just heard from the airport. Come on, Leo, the prime minister should hear this.”

  She led him, with O.O. slouching behind, into the War Room. Bronwyn Wilson, eyes on a map of South America, didn’t look up. While Erin Vaughn, who’d returned when Anna had been outside, nearly dropped her pad as they entered.

  “What now?” Vaughn asked.

  “We’ve more bad news,” Anna said. “My father was upstairs. Apparently the sentries wouldn’t let him in. A few hours ago, he flew above the eastern coast of New South Wales, near the refugee camps above Ballina. The force of the nuclear detonations created a tsunami.”

  “A tsunami?” Wilson asked. “We should evacuate. We should leave Canberra before it arrives.”

  “Ah, no, Prime Minister,” Vaughn said with admirable patience. “We’re a hundred and fifty kilometres inland, and six hundred metres above sea level.”

  “Should we go upstairs to the roof, in case?” the PM asked.

  “The wave has already hit,” Anna said, addressing Erin Vaughn as much as the PM. “I sent my father back to the airport. He’s with the flying doctor service. He’ll begin organising the evacuation of the coast with help from Captain Hawker of the SAS and Deputy Commissioner Tess Qwong. I can’t think of anyone here better qualified.”

  “No, that was a good idea. Quick thinking,” Vaughn said. “They’ll send us an eye-witness account?”

  “Within a few hours. About five, I think,” Anna said. “Once we have it, we can adapt accordingly. But he’s already sent word over the radio for planes to redirect here and to other airfields inland.”

  “More refugees?” the prime minister asked. “Do we have room?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Anna said, feeling her patience straining to breaking point. “We were preparing Australia for the arrival of tens of millions of refugees, remember?”

  “Good, thank you,” Vaughn said. “Keep us updated.”

  “Sorry, no,” Smilovitz said. “That’s not even the beginning of the disaster. My initial assessment was incorrect. I can give you an updated, and more accurate, summary.”

  “Fine. Bring it up on screen,” the prime minister said.

  “Yeah, no, that’ll require an hour inputting data into a graphics programme I’ve never used before,” Smilovitz said, echoes of Dr Avalon clear in his caustic reply. “The main impact site was two hundred kilometres east of Kiribati. That nation is gone.”

  “Which nation?” the PM asked.

  “Kiribati,” O.O. said, quietly. “Go on, mate, tell us the rest.”

  “Tuvalu, Niue, they are also gone,” Smilovitz said. “Effectively swept away. Submerged. Samoa has been wiped out.”

  “Samoa?” Anna asked. “But that’s where the fleet was going. Where the Americans had flown troops and equipment.”

  Dr Smilovitz nodded. “The waters will subside, and there will be some survivors. This is just preliminary data, and it’s third or fourth-hand radio reports, so it could be exaggerated. However, the news of Samoa came via a weather station on Mount Fiji, relayed to an overhead aircraft. That plane was out of fuel and had nowhere to land. Before it crashed in the ocean, it radioed what it had heard to any ships still receiving.”

  “Should we mount a rescue?” Wilson asked. “We should mount a rescue, shouldn’t we?”

  “He’s not finished,” O.O. said. “You’re not, are you, mate?”

  “Other reports from other planes confirm the tsunami,” Smilovitz said. “The islands took the worst of it, which means, I think, relatively little damage from the waves to Australia and New Zealand.”

  “The ocean took a bite out of our coast,” O.O. said. “You’re saying that counts as relatively little?”

  “Yes,” Smilovitz said. “It could have been worse, but only numerically speaking, and only for us. This was an omnidirectional event. Like ripples in a pond. Australia was shielded, to an extent, by the island nations east of here. That were east of here. Hawaii had no such good fortune. And then there are the Americas.”

  “What about the Americas?” the prime minister asked. “We need some satellite imagery. Why aren’t there satellite pictures?”

  “The Americas would have been hit with a wave similar to that which hit our east coast?” Vaughn asked, ignoring the prime minister.

  “And right now, we can only estimate the devastation,” Smilovitz said.

  “What about Guam?” Anna asked. “Is there any word from the American leadership?”

  “They took some damage from the tsunami,” Smilovitz said. “And this is where I get to the bad news.”

  “What you just said was bad enough,” O.O. said.

  “The seismograph was troubling me,” Smilovitz said. “I’d like more time with the data. I thought it was one event, the warheads detonating in one place at roughly the same time. I now think it was more than one event.”

  “There were other bombs?” Anna asked.

  “And closer,” Smilovitz said. “If this was a targeted, planned strike, it would have been timed for the warheads to detonate at the same time. Instead, the explosions were spread out, both in time and geography. At present, it appears as if the first warhead in the primary impact zone detonated an hour before the last. Most detonations do appear to have clustered together, but again, I’ll need more time to assess the data properly.”

  “You’ve lost me now, mate,” O.O. said. “Try it again in plain English.”

  “There were other detonations afterwards,” Smilovitz said. “Mostly individual events. Single missiles, though perhaps with multiple warheads. But in other locations, far from that first oceanic impact site.”

  “Are you saying there were detonations here in Australia?” O.O. asked.

  “It would explain some of the disruption to communications,” Smilovitz said.

  “That’s neither confirmation nor denial,” Vaughn said.

  Smilovitz shrugged. “It doesn’t help that you recruited a bunch of app-developers who couldn’t tell the difference between a fibre-optic cable and a power cord to dismantle a state of the art command and control centre. Actual data, real data, is scarce. I’m collating eyewitness accounts and inferring from what damage and disruption there’s been, and from the information we’re not receiving. The EMP, rather the many pulses, would have knocked out any unshielded circuits.”

  “You’re saying we don’t know if a nuke’s been dropped on Australia?” O.O. said. “Tell me that’s the last of the bad news?”

  “Yes, but no, that’s not the bad news, either,” Smilovitz said. “The bad news, the worst news, came from Guam. A plane flew overhead, couldn’t land because the runway was wrecked, so had to turn around, but they got a report from the ground. The fleet has gone.”

  “Which fleet?” the PM asked.

  “You mean the combined U.S. and allied fleet?” Vaughn asked. “Two aircraft carriers, their combined support vessels, and the civilian transports travelling with them? The tsunami destroyed them?”

  “No,” Smilovitz said. “The fleet was destroyed by an atomic blast. A single missile, probably launched from a submarine.” He glanced at the notepad. “Right now, that’s all we know, except that the fleet was deliberately targeted and deliberately sunk. With no satellites to aid in targeting, the submarine would have to, initially, have been within visual range.” He held up a hand. “There’s one other incident you need to be aware of. A mushroom cloud was seen in the Himalayas.”

  “In China, India, or Pakistan?” O.O. asked.

  “Uncertain,” Smilovitz said.

  “So the initial, large blast at sea could have been some kind of accident?” O.O
. asked. “Nothing else makes sense. But to sink the carrier fleet, that has to be an act of war.”

  “By who?” Anna asked.

  “It truly is the end of everything,” the PM whispered.

  “It’s on-going,” Smilovitz said. “That is the most important conclusion to draw. For whatever reason this began, it isn’t over yet.”

  “No, it’s not,” O.O. said, and made for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Anna asked.

  “To find jet fuel,” O.O. said. “Sounds like we’ll need it.”

  “I guess he means a drink,” Smilovitz said as the portly politician stormed across the near empty C.O.M.S.

  “The capitals are all gone,” Vaughn said. “And the leaderships with them, as far as we know, and as far as their ambassadors know. We have no idea who is in charge of the nuclear buttons, or even where the new leaders are. But you’re implying this will peter out?”

  Smilovitz shrugged. “Time will tell.”

  “Should we relocate to the airport?” Anna asked. “You said you’re getting all this information relayed, ultimately, from planes.”

  “Not all the information,” Smilovitz said. “And I can bring more systems back online. But I need more help. Did you speak to Flo?”

  “Dr Avalon?” she asked, and realised it was the first time she’d heard him call her anything but her surname. That only doubled her anxiety. “No. I’ll go and speak to her now. I’ll be back within the hour.”

  “The worst has to be over,” Vaughn said, following Anna from the War Room to the airlock-doors.

  “We’ve said that before,” Anna said.

  “But how many more missiles can there be left?” Vaughn asked.

  “Okay, yes,” Anna said. “But once the war is over, there’s the fallout.” She paused to look back at the War Room where the prime minister, once more, stared vacantly at the wall. “We have to do something about Bronwyn. She’s in no state to give a broadcast to the nation.”

  “Certainly not live, but we can record it,” Erin said.

  “And if not, you should give it,” Anna said. “You or Ian.”