“Looks like rain,” Jerome said, zipping his coat up. “I better hurry.”
“How are the kids?” Olivia asked.
“They’re staying with my aunt,” Jerome said. “Don’t worry about them. There’s nowhere safer they could be.”
“You’re going back to Nanaimo now?” Corrie asked.
“Yes, but I’ll go to the hospital first. If you three aren’t coming with us, we’ve got space for passengers.”
“How are things in Vancouver?” Pete asked.
“They could be worse,” Jerome said. “We’re ferrying over work gangs to secure the waterfront. But I think…” He glanced around, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter if his words were overheard. “When all the trapped survivors have been rescued, I think we’ll abandon the city.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Pete said.
“We don’t have the ammo, the fuel,” Jerome said. “And what does the city have for us? Islands and small towns are the future. But it might change again. Britain has a vaccine.”
“Really?” Pete asked.
“So the rumour goes,” Jerome said. “I think Dr Avalon has gone to work on it.”
“To Britain?”
“No, to Australia. She left by ship. A vaccine could change everything, if it’s real. If it works. We’ve just got to hold on. Are you still recording footage as you go?”
“Yep,” Corrie said.
“Keep doing it. In a few years, when this is over, the horror will fade from people’s memories. We can’t let it be forgotten.”
“And Canberra wished us luck?” Pete asked.
“Liu Higson said a message had come from the government, from…” He took out a notebook. “She made me write it down. From Anna Dodson.”
“Mick’s daughter?” Corrie asked.
“She’s a friend?” Jerome asked.
“Sort of,” Corrie said. “She’s a politician. I’m friends with her father.”
“She thanks you for your efforts and wants you to continue. She wishes you luck. Liu added a note of her own, wishing they’d sent you some SAS, but things are bad in Australia, too. But you know what I think? If the worst isn’t over, it will be soon. Here’s the hospital. Until next time.”
“Until next time,” Corrie echoed.
A used-auto dealership had been commandeered for use as a motor pool, with most of its stock having been replaced by partially disassembled military vehicles. But standing next to one was a familiar face.
“Private Lacoona!” Corrie said. “You’ve been moved from quarantine duty?”
“And I got a promotion. Corporal Lacoona, at your service.”
“Congrats,” Pete said. “Are you running the motor-pool now?”
“Nope. I’m waiting for you,” Lacoona said, holding up a small bag. “The commissioner gave me the dispatches for General Yoon. You three are the drivers, and I’m the guide. Sorry. You four. Didn’t see you there, boy. How are you?” She bent to tousle Rufus’s fur. “Four seems like overkill, though. We’re going to be crowded.”
“They want us out of town,” Olivia said.
“Really, why?” Lacoona asked. “Oh, you’ve got to tell me, but while we drive. We’re going to Wawa, and that’s about five hundred kilometres away, near Lake Superior.”
“Lake Superior? Close to the bridge and border with Michigan?” Olivia asked.
“The bridge at Sault Ste. Marie is gone,” Lacoona said.
“That’s what I heard,” Olivia said. “Was it you? Or us? The general, I mean.”
“I don’t think so,” Lacoona said. “General Yoon took responsibility, but I think it was accidental. Done in panic. Closing the border there didn’t help because millions of refugees came through Detroit. I heard a battalion of engineers have built a temporary crossing over the Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie, but I don’t think rumours are any more reliable now we don’t have phones than when we did.”
“If it’s five hundred kilometres, we’ll be lucky to get there tonight,” Pete said.
“We’ll be lucky to get there tomorrow,” Lacoona said. “And I don’t know whether the general is still there, but Wawa was where the fighter jets saw her last. They’ve been using them to fly reconnaissance.”
“And you can tell us about that as we drive,” Corrie said. “So, how about we find a car?”
“It’s got four wheels, so it must be a car,” Olivia said, as they walked around the TAPV.
“The mechanic said it was a Tactical Armoured Patrol Vehicle,” Corrie said.
“I can see the armour, and I suppose we’re the patrol, but I’m feeling light on tactics,” Lacoona said. “Does anyone think they can drive it?”
Corrie climbed up the step, opened the driver’s door, and peered at the controls. “I think so.”
“They didn’t teach you how to drive these when you joined up?” Pete asked.
“I’m a schoolteacher,” Corporal Lacoona said. “Or I was until a week ago. I taught Clive’s grandchildren. The commissioner. But they’ve moved the children over to the islands. And they have plenty of older teachers, and older grandparents who can cover a semester of lessons. The rest of us have been conscripted. Clive offered to deputise me. But what do I know about law and order? But police, soldiers, it’s all the same now, isn’t it? Are you sure you can drive this?”
“There’s one way to find out,” Corrie said. “Besides, it’s this, or that tank. You taught in Thunder Bay?”
“Oh, sure. But I know the way. We have to put these on the truck.” She handed a pair of flags to Pete. One bore the red maple leaf of Canada, the other was the Stars and Stripes. Both were rigid, small, and easily attached to the rear of the armoured car.
“Why the American flag?” Pete asked.
“I didn’t ask,” Lacoona said. “I know enough about the military that you’re never supposed to.”
“Do you know what the message is?” Pete asked.
“I do,” Lacoona said. “Do you know what it means?”
“I was going to ask you that next,” Pete said.
“Clive knows,” Lacoona said. “But he wouldn’t tell me. We’ll find out when we get there, eh?” She pulled out a thin cloth chevron. “So, last question, do any of you know how to sew?”
Chapter 26 - Three Women, a Man, and Their Dog
Thunder Bay to Nipigong
Getting spare fuel for the TAPV took two minutes. Getting ammo necessitated returning to the commissioner for authorisation. Having no spare shells for Olivia’s shotgun, the armourer gave her an assault rifle instead. Getting food, after queuing for an hour in an unmoving line, required returning to the hotel and begging it from the eternally grumpy chef. Finally getting out of Thunder Bay took just as frustratingly long, as the small city’s roads were clogged with foot traffic.
“Thunder Bay is bigger than I thought,” Olivia said, the sheer number of passers-by bringing her out of the dark mood which had settled after the confrontation with Mack.
“These people? Oh, they’re all refugees,” Lacoona said. “I s’pose we should stop calling them that. Farmers, I s’pose that’s what they are now.”
Mud-covered, exhausted, and empty-handed except for an occasional small bag, they filtered through the roadblocks, then spread out across the road as they continued on to their night’s rest in a multi-occupancy hotel room, or overcrowded house. A few others still laboured at the roadside, digging up a verge or front yard. Others, covered in as much grease as mud, worked on turning roadblocks into the barricades going up at nearly every intersection.
“Each block’s becoming a mini-fortress,” Pete said.
Rufus yipped his agreement.
“The fences are too high,” Corrie whispered.
“What’s that?” Lacoona asked.
“The fences,” Corrie said. “They’ve dug up the yards for planting, then built fences around them, but the fences are too high. The sun won’t get in.”
“You’re a gardener?” Lacoona asked.
“No, but I am an expert on fences. I used to maintain the dingo fence in New South Wales, to keep the wild dogs out of the farmland.”
“You should tell Clive when we get back,” Lacoona said. “He’ll put you in charge. Seriously. No one knows what they’re doing here. How could we? Who could think something like this would ever happen? Oh, sure, you worry about a disaster, but it’ll never happen before the day after tomorrow, so there’s always time to prepare. But how can you prepare for this?”
“Exactly my thoughts,” Corrie said.
They reached another roadblock, and had to stop while the gates were opened. The guards, three of them, armed with hunting rifles, were all in their seventies. Perhaps they’d been soldiers once, but they weren’t now. They weren’t police, either, despite the windbreakers they wore. They didn’t ask to see papers or I.D., but waved the TAPV through with a nod of mutual appreciation.
From the weary conscript-labourers trudging bed-ward after a backbreaking shift they received a different look: pity mixed with gratitude that they were going to bed rather than the out into the nightmare dangers beyond Thunder Bay’s half-built walls.
Finally they reached the northeastern edge of the city, and the last of the new logging camps, where the old forest was being torn aside to make way for farmland. On Highway 17, vehicles had been pushed to the roadside, and often into the woodland on either side. Some had scratches. Some bore dents. Others were riddled with bullet holes. Most had open fuel caps suggesting someone had come along after they were abandoned to salvage any remaining fuel. A few were burned wrecks, marking the pyres where the infected had been aboard.
“We should have gone shopping,” Olivia said.
“Oh, no stores have been open for days,” Lacoona said.
“I guess I should have said looting,” Olivia said, opening the bag and quickly sorting through it. “You see all those open fuel caps of the cars we’re passing?”
“Someone’s taken the gas,” Pete said.
“Yes, but why leave a car out here, so far from Thunder Bay?” Olivia said. “I assume that’s where they were heading. They must have run out of fuel. Maybe not all of them, but a lot. Someone came along later to take whatever was left. And there are so many vehicles, it had to be someone official.”
“The general,” Lacoona said. “I bet it was her. I didn’t hear about it, but who would say they spent an afternoon stealing what was left in other people’s cars? But why did that make you think of looting?”
“It just struck me that nothing is going to be made anymore,” Olivia said. “Everything we don’t have, we’ll have to do without, and we have hardly anything here. A small first-aid kit, some ammo, enough food for a few days, but there’s no stove. No utensils. A water bottle, and no coffee. A few tools, but no rope. No compass.”
“I have one,” Corrie said.
“That’s something,” Olivia said. “And we have a sewing kit, but no clothes. I suppose…” She trailed off.
“What?” Pete asked.
Olivia shook her head, then shrugged, deciding that there was no harm in sharing. “It’s not just how quickly things change, but how often. I’d just gotten my head around the idea of the outbreak and working in the hospital when that burned down. I had not gotten used to life in the cabin before I had to return to the city. I was on the run there, playing foster-mom to a bunch of kids when you arrived, and now I’m… here. It’s a whirlwind, that’s all.”
“You worked in a hospital?” Lacoona asked.
“I was only helping out,” Olivia said.
“What was it like? Or would you prefer not discussing it?”
Olivia glanced out the window, then back at the corporal. “No, it’s fine. And it was chaotic. Far worse than Thunder Bay.”
She talked as they drove, while outside the number of abandoned vehicles thinned.
At a southerly road signposted for Pass Lake and Sleeping Giant National Park, the abandoned vehicles had been dragged together to form a wall around a solitary truck stop. Above it, on a small crane, hung a maple-leaf flag. Standing on the door of an upturned minivan, a uniformed sentry raised a hand as they drove by. It would have been reassuring if, on the other side of the road, a trio in heavy-duty hazmat clothing weren’t dragging corpses over to a smouldering fire.
It was a grim sight to keep them thoughtful as they turned northeast, venturing inland. To Pete, it suggested what they’d seen in Indiana and Michigan were truer representations of how the world now was than Nanaimo or Thunder Bay. But which would become a template for the future? Mulling that over kept him occupied until the thought was driven from his mind by the cows.
Occasional small fields, belonging to equally small farms, were bracketed by equally small pockets of ancient arboreal forest. Among the waterlogged winter grass, and between the trees, marched and munched scores of cows. Hundreds. Thousands. The further they drove, the higher Pete revised his estimate.
Parked on the road, and in the fields, were livestock transports guarded by armed sentries, who must also have been the vehicle’s drivers. None offered a greeting to the passing TAPV beyond a relieved relaxation when it became clear the army vehicle wasn’t going to stop.
“The plates on that transporter were from Wisconsin,” Pete said.
“I’m guessing the cows are, too,” Olivia said.
“They’re Holsteins,” Lacoona said. “Dairy cows. This must have been what they were talking about.”
“Who was talking?” Olivia asked.
“Oh, I overheard Captain Crawford discussing it with a couple of farmers,” Lacoona said. “Someone pitched the idea to the general a week ago. They’d been a farmer before enlisting in the U.S. army. They knew where the cows were, and said they should bring them north, but I didn’t think it was this many.”
“They went south to steal the cows?” Pete asked.
“Or to save them,” Olivia said.
There were so many. And so many transporters. Hundreds, and so perhaps twice that number of people.
Pete grinned.
“What’s funny?” Olivia asked.
“Oh, it’s not funny,” he said. “But if the general can organise all of that, I’ve got hope for the future.”
They continued beyond the last of the transporters, and then beyond the last of the stray cows that wandered alone through the trees, nibbling at the frost-tipped grass. The road continued, and so did they, as the sun dipped towards the horizon.
“We’ll have to stop soon,” Lacoona said.
“Any idea where?” Corrie asked. “No. Warm your hands, we’ve got trouble ahead.”
Even as Pete leaned sideways to peer out the windscreen, Corrie braked.
Rufus growled a protest as he was thrown from his perch.
“You and me both, buddy,” Pete muttered, rubbing his knees. He frowned, again looking ahead, again looking for the danger, but all he could see was a car. The ocean-blue four-door had stalled in the middle of the road. There was mud on the tyres and fender, but otherwise nothing remarkable about it. The doors were closed. The windows were unbroken. Pete let his gaze roam beyond the vehicle, settling on the large house on the northern side of the road. Or was it a small farmhouse? The main building was a two-storey, white-trimmed, wood-clad, with an upper-floor balcony built over the front door, creating a sheltered porch. To one side was a double garage, and to the other a barn, again both of the same white-trimmed, wooden style. Behind the building, the ancient forests, which bracketed the house’s flanks, turned to cleared grassland, but there was no livestock. It was the same with the land on the other side of the road. A section of woodland had been cleared a few seasons ago, left to grass, but with no sign of livestock. Had it been cleared simply so the owner of the house had a view?
Rufus gave a low, warning growl.
“Is there only one?” Olivia asked.
“Check behind us,” Corrie said. “But I think so.”
Pete turned back to the car. This time
he saw it because, now, it waved. It was the wrong verb to describe the languid, beckoning curl of its hands. The zombie was trapped beneath the front wheel of the car, its head beating slowly against the road.
“I think it… it must have… it must have clogged the axle,” Corrie said, struggling to find an antiseptically bloodless form of words.
“It shouldn’t be here,” Lacoona said. “This is the area the general cleared. The cows must be part of the reason why. We’re about fifteen kilometres from Nipigong, and that’s supposed to be a supply hub for communities in the north as well as for the frontline.”
“Well, it’s definitely here,” Pete said.
“I mean this is a well-travelled road,” Lacoona said. “That car has to have stopped recently. But that doesn’t explain how the zombie ended up there.”
“Let’s go ask,” Corrie said. “Eyes bright, safeties off. Pete, have you still got that suppressor?”
“For the pistol, sure.”
He glanced at the house, which still appeared dark, then up and down the road before finally getting out. “Rufus?”
The dog jumped down, circling the TAPV while continuously looking at the trapped zombie. Pete did the same, though he included the house in his continuous inspection. The car had been abandoned after colliding with the zombie. If the driver had taken shelter, it would have been in the house, but it appeared utterly empty. And why hadn’t the driver killed the zombie?
The air was cold, the wind brisk, creating a low whispering susurrus among the trees. The hairs rose on the back of his neck as he walked slowly towards the car. Olivia came to join him from the other side of the TAPV. Lacoona stood facing the way they’d come, leaving Corrie behind the wheel as Pete paced forward, suppressed pistol in hand, his attention increasingly focused on the trapped zombie. He raised the handgun, bracing his right hand with his left.
“Uniform,” Olivia whispered.
Pete blinked. He’d not noticed at first. But, yes, the zombie wore a uniform. A complete set, at least as far as he could tell with one wheel parked on its back, another on its left ankle. Its right leg kicked weakly while its right hand reached up towards the humans. It was almost as if it was asking for help. Almost, except there was nothing but death in its eyes, and even worse in the snapping mouth. Pete fired. The bullet whispered from the gun, entering the creature’s skull. The sound of the soft impact was immediately lost behind the muffled thud as the bullet slammed into the hardtop beneath.
Surviving The Evacuation | Life Goes On (Book 2): No More News Page 21