Surviving The Evacuation | Life Goes On (Book 2): No More News

by Tayell, Frank

  “You won’t get a seat on the jet,” Jerome said. “There was a long list of sick but treatable children awaiting airlift to a functioning hospital. People need a reason to fight, to work, to struggle. For now, saving the children is providing it.”

  “But there’ll be more planes by now,” Andrea said. “More jets. I’m sure of it. We’re getting close. You better take your seats.”

  Thankfully, the plane landed on a runway rather than the sea, and at an airport where it wasn’t the only plane. Helicopters and fighter jets waited on stand, though there appeared to be no civilian aircraft. As he clambered down the steps, after Corrie and Jerome, Pete saw what appeared to be a welcome party, two of whom he recognised. Dr Avalon and Dr Smilovitz stood next to a uniformed soldier and two other civilians. Smilovitz waved. Avalon scowled as she slowly coiled a neon green rope. The other two civilians grabbed bags from the towering stack behind them and stepped forward before the soldier motioned them back. As a ground crew ran over to refuel the plane, the private came forward to meet them.

  “Constable MacDonald?” the private asked. She was tall, but slightly overweight for a soldier, with longer hair than was usual, and which, oddly, appeared dyed at the tips. “Are these the Australians?” she asked.

  “More or less,” Corrie said.

  “I have four more passengers for you,” the private said, turning back to Jerome. “You’re to refuel and return to British Columbia immediately.” She pulled out a trio of letters. “Those are your orders, and dispatches for the officer in charge.”

  “In Nanaimo?” Jerome asked.

  “In Guam,” the private said. “That’s where the scientist wants to go.” She jerked a thumb at Dr Avalon.

  “What about the children?” Corrie asked.

  “What children?” the private asked.

  “We’ve got four child-refugees. Canadians,” Jerome said. “Trying to get to their family in Alberta.”

  The private shrugged. “My orders are that Dr Avalon gets on that plane. She needs to get to a lab. We need her in a lab, and a better equipped facility than we’ve got here.” She gave a shake of her head. “That woman…”

  “We’ll give up our seats,” Corrie said. “Pete, me, Olivia, and Rufus. You’d have room then?”

  Jerome eyed the scientists. “I think we’d have space, but weight would still be an issue. Do they need those bags?”

  “I’ll speak to them,” the private said.

  “And I better speak to Olivia,” Pete said.

  But she didn’t object. “Let me just say goodbye to the children,” she said.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of days,” Andrea said. “I promise you a ride then.”

  “Wait, hang on,” Pete said. “You better take this.” He unclipped the bodycam he’d picked up at Pine Dock. “It stopped working days ago, but it might have something useful on it for Canberra or whoever.”

  “I’ll make sure they get it,” Andrea said. She took Corrie’s as well.

  Pete, Olivia, Corrie, and Rufus joined the private while the scientists boarded the plane. The ungainly duck lumbered around, and barely twenty minutes after it had landed, it was back in the air.

  “Lacoona,” the private said. “Jan Lacoona, my name. What’s your dog’s?”

  “Rufus,” Olivia said. “But he’s not really mine. He’s very much his own.”

  “He’ll have to join you in quarantine,” the private said.

  “Quarantine?” Pete asked.

  “Yep, it’s standard procedure,” Lacoona said. “Every newcomer has to go through a twenty-four-hour quarantine. I s’pose I should have made those kids go through it.” She shrugged. “Not my problem now. It’s over here.”

  She led them to a hangar, recently painted red and white, where plastic sheeting had been run across the quarter-open, wing-width doors. Outside, metal riot-barriers created four arm’s-width lanes. The private ignored those and went to the pedestrian entrance, holding the door open for them as they entered.

  “Where is everyone?” Olivia asked, looking around the cavernous space.

  Immediately in front of the main doors were rows of desks, most folding, none matching. Behind them were another set of waist-high barriers that seemed to filter people towards the edge of the hangar and an above-head-height curtain. From the crudely rigged pipes, the curtains concealed showers. Beyond those were more barriers, though this time with only two exits. One led to what resembled a departure lounge. The other exit led to three prefab-offices, the size of shipping containers, and with covered windows.

  “Everyone else?” Lacoona asked. “They’ve already been processed.”

  “I mean… I suppose I’m asking about the planes, the refugees,” Olivia said. “Did you get many through here? By air?”

  “Oh, originally, during the first few days,” the private said. “But that’s stopped now. People still drift in by road or rail, but not by air. Not really by boat, either. Satellites are down. Telephone’s mostly dead, except the new lines the general is laying. Radio works, but only short range. If you’re a pilot with a working plane, why would you come here? And if you weren’t familiar with the airport, how would you find it? You’re the first people who’ve arrived by air since yesterday. And that was the first since the rush ended.” Her eyes fell on the rifles Pete and Corrie carried. “Okay, there’s two ways this can go. You need to go in, strip, and I need to confirm you haven’t been bitten. You’ve got to shower. Then wait. I’ll get you some new clothes, and there’s some bleach for cleaning any of your gear you don’t want incinerated. Then I’ll get you some food. You stay here tonight. Tomorrow, you’ll be let go. Are you okay with that? Because the alternative is I go tell the captain, and he tells General Yoon, and you don’t want to get on the wrong side of her.”

  “This isn’t our first quarantine,” Pete said.

  “Modesty, it’s the first casualty of the apocalypse,” Corrie said.

  “Not the first,” Olivia said. “But yeah, that’s fine.”

  “Good. Then you can keep your weapons, and…” She looked at the dog. “He’ll have to be washed, too.”

  “Good. Fine. Perfect,” the private said after the most perfunctory of intimate examinations. “Showers are there. I’ll get the captain.”

  “She didn’t give us the clean clothes,” Corrie said, as the private hurried out of the cavernous hangar.

  “Maybe they’re here, somewhere,” Olivia said. “Rufus, find clothes.”

  The dog tilted his head to the side, but didn’t rise from his haunches.

  “It was worth a try,” Olivia said.

  “How’d you end up with a dog?” Pete asked, quickly redressing as much due to the chill as to awkward embarrassment.

  “Oh, he sort of found me,” Olivia said. “Then left me again. He didn’t want to come with me first time I left South Bend, but he was waiting when I got back. I’m surprised he came with us this time. Surprised, but glad. We want clothes, right? It’ll be easier if we split up.”

  Once again, she was avoiding discussing the details of what had happened during the last week, but Pete didn’t press. Instead, he mooched his way around the cavernous hangar. Above, the expansive ceiling with its dark overhead lights gave him a sense of the square footage. On the ground, with shoulder-high partitions dividing the space into rooms and corridors, it seemed far larger. As illumination came entirely from wall lamps, recently bolted to the walls, the partitions cast deep shadows, making a search even more difficult until he struck on the obvious solution of pushing the partitions over.

  Refugees, arriving by air, would have been led to a row of desks. Probably where their names and details were taken. From there, they were funnelled through the partitions to the showers, which was as much an opportunity to disarm people as to check whether they’d been bitten. Then they’d entered the main part of the hangar, which was filled with worn chairs and limp folding beds, except for an even more depressing corner filled with beanbags, mats, a
nd soft toys.

  That wasn’t as depressing as the corner with the prefab container-sized rooms. They’d been painted white and adorned with red crosses, but that didn’t disguise their purpose, nor could the thick layer of bleach entirely hide the smell of death. Inside each were hospital beds fitted with restraints. In the floor, beneath the beds, were bullet holes. He didn’t count how many, but made his way back out into the hangar, shivering, but not because of the cold.

  Back near the entrance, Rufus sat beneath the table, a glum look on his face.

  “You and me both, buddy,” Pete said, taking a chair. A few minutes later, Olivia drifted over, Corrie a few steps behind.

  “I couldn’t find clothes,” Olivia said. “I guess people took their bags with them when they left.”

  “I found a few books,” Corrie said. “You have a choice between regency romance or a western crime-thriller.”

  “Did you see the cabins?” Pete asked.

  “And the bullet holes,” Olivia said. “But there is electricity here. I’d rate it three stars. Three and a half if the showers work.”

  Rufus sat up, turning around to face the door just before a soldier entered.

  It wasn’t the private, but an exhausted officer fraying at the edges. His eyes were bloodshot, sunken, ringed by dark shadows. His shoulders had a near-permanent slump. His hand was steady, balanced on his holster, the other clutching the strap of a slim shoulder bag.

  “Still alive. Good,” he said, letting go of his gun. “I’m Captain Crawford. Currently in charge of the military contingent until General Yoon returns. You’re the Australians?”

  “Sort of,” Corrie said.

  “Meaning?” Crawford asked, sitting at the desk. He took out a small audio recorder, then a notepad and pen.

  “We came here on a mission for Canberra, yes,” Corrie said.

  “To Indiana,” Crawford said. “Yes, I know the broad strokes. I’d like the fine details.”

  So they told him, as he made notes.

  “Vevermee was a United States police officer?” Crawford asked when they thought they’d finished.

  “A state trooper, I think,” Olivia said. “From Michigan.”

  “And the people with him were all police officers?” Crawford asked.

  “No. They were wearing uniform, but I don’t think they were cops,” Olivia said. “Not all of them.”

  “I will ask the commissioner,” Crawford said. “He’ll ask his officers, see if we can find anyone who knows the name.”

  “Can’t you look it up on a database?” Pete asked.

  “It was stored in the cloud,” Crawford said. “Everything. Every blessed useful thing was stored online. The data centres have been powered down to preserve the information therein.” He shook his head in disgust. “Was there anything else?”

  “Only that we need some new clothes, and some food,” Corrie said.

  “Ask the private,” the captain said. “Good day.”

  “Now there’s a man who needs a vacation,” Olivia said.

  “Or an assistant,” Corrie said. “I guess we wait for the private. So, who wants the romance, because I think I’d prefer the thriller.”

  “Definitely romance,” Olivia said. “Pete and I can share.”

  But Private Lacoona returned before they’d read more than a page.

  “Uniforms,” she said, dropping the stack on the table. “And I’ve got dinner outside. Things got busy there for a moment.”

  “Why? Did something happen?” Corrie asked.

  “People arrived,” Lacoona said.

  “I didn’t hear a plane,” Pete said.

  “No, it was a road convoy,” Lacoona said. “They should have gone through quarantine further east, but they didn’t, so we’re all running around with bees in our boots. General Yoon being away doesn’t help.” She shrugged. “But even if we’re making up the rules as we go along, we’re making them work. I’ll get your dinner.”

  It was a U.S. military, beef stew MRE, but one each. She’d brought four.

  “We got these from a quartermaster, one of yours,” Lacoona said. “From the U.S., I mean. He came up here with about two tons of them in the back of a semi. Now there’s a story, remind me to tell you about it. Listen, you’re going to stay in here, right? You won’t sneak off, eh?”

  “Nope.”

  She grinned. “Then I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “No flights at night, I guess,” Pete said, as they watched the private leave.

  “Off on a romantic tryst of her own, I’d say,” Olivia said.

  “Speaking of which,” Corrie said. “I’m going to find a quiet corner to read my book. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “That was nice of her,” Olivia said when she and Pete were alone, “but this place doesn’t exactly ooze romance. We forgot them, you know?”

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Books,” Olivia said. “Back in the store, when we were planning how we’d live in that cabin, we forgot books. And a solar-powered reading light. Or a little wind turbine. We forgot electricity. But also how dark it can get at night without lights. It took me about a day to realise I was so far out of my depth I was wading in seaweed. It’s why I was glad to meet Naomi and Conrad, to take the risk and hope they weren’t psychos.”

  “They were Robyn and Tyler’s mom and dad, right?” Pete asked.

  “Yeah, I don’t want to think about that. Not now. Tell me more about Australia.”

  “I think I’ve told you everything,” he said. “Wait, no, did I tell you about Matilda?”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Corrie’s best friend. The first thing you need to know, she’s very hairy…”

  3rd March

  Chapter 22 - A Change of Direction

  Thunder Bay

  The screech of a departing fighter jet was louder than any alarm clock, but Pete was already awake. It was difficult to sleep in the quarantine zone when, for company, they had the ghosts of those recent denizens whose fate was memorialised by the bullet holes in the shipping container’s floor. By the time he’d dragged a table over to the side-window, three planes had vanished into the grey morning’s gloom.

  “Can you see anything?” Olivia asked, having followed him over.

  “Just rain,” Pete said.

  “That beats snow,” Olivia said. She shivered. “I didn’t think anywhere could be colder than that cabin, but this hangar managed it. I cannot wait until we get to Australia.”

  “You say that now,” Pete said. “I got heatstroke walking from the plane to the terminal building.”

  “No fooling, you got heatstroke?”

  “Yep. According to Mick Dodson, who might have been exaggerating, but not by much.”

  “He’s the doctor with all the rules? Tell me about him again.”

  “I only met him a few times,” Pete said. “But Corrie knows him well.”

  “Let’s go ask her,” Olivia said.

  If sleeping had been difficult, reconnecting with Olivia was as difficult in the hangar as it had been the previous night, hiding in the Michigan farm. Something had happened to her in South Bend, something she didn’t yet want to talk about, but which was a shadowy chaperone, looming over every conversation.

  “You three still here?” Private Lacoona called out. “I see you are. Good boy,” she added as Rufus bounded over to her, wagging his tail as he fixed his eyes on the bag. “Yep, you can drop the glad-to-see-you act, I know you’re really only after breakfast.”

  “Where were those planes going?” Corrie asked.

  “Taking reconnaissance photographs of South Bend,” the private said.

  “You’re going back there?” Olivia asked.

  “Not me,” the private said.

  “But maybe us,” Corrie said. “If they want to go back there, they’ll ask us to go with them.”

  “In the army, they don’t ask,” Lacoona said. She left. Time marched on.

  Two of the three f
ighter jets returned, bringing a storm with them. Rain hammered down, hard enough to find a gap high up in the hangar’s roof. They looked for a bucket, settling on a black garbage can, and then watched the rain pounding the runway, wandering if they’d been forgotten. Noon came. The rain eased. Finally, Captain Crawford returned, buttoned up in a thick raincoat.

  “Your quarantine’s over,” he said from the doorway, turning around before the words were out of his mouth.

  “Wait, um, sir,” Corrie said. “What do we do now? Where do we go?”

  “You wait for orders, like we all do,” Crawford said. He unstiffened a fraction. “We lost the hard-line with General Yoon last night. I sent the fighter planes to make contact.”

  “You mean the plane that hasn’t returned?” Olivia asked.

  “Yet,” Crawford said. “It hasn’t returned yet.”

  “I thought the jets had flown to South Bend,” Corrie said.

  “The other two, yes. They were on a reconnaissance mission at the request of the commissioner,” Crawford said. “He doesn’t want someone like Vevermee in control of a city.”

  “The commissioner? Who’s that?” Corrie asked.

  “The commissioner of police,” Crawford said. He glanced at his watch. “I can’t waste any more time. The hundreds who arrived by road are due to leave quarantine in an hour.”

  “What do we do now?” Corrie asked. “Where do we go?”

  “You wait,” Crawford said. “A team might be sent to South Bend. If so, you’ll be part of it. Australia might send orders for you, and if not, we’ll find you work. There’s always more than enough to go around.”

  “We should wait here?” Olivia asked.

  “No. Go to the donut shop on Arthur Street. Ask for the police commissioner. He’ll find you somewhere to sleep.”

  “Where’s Arthur Street?” Pete asked.

  Crawford sighed with weary exasperation. “North of the airport is the Neebing River. East is Highway 61. Everything between is our green zone. The donut shop is where Highway 61 meets Arthur Street.”