The Colony

by Lang, Christopher

  After hanging up, Matthew passed the phone back to Juan, “Thanks my friend. I'm Matthew, by the way and this is my boy, Ethan.”

  “I'm Juan. We’re from New Caledonia and we were planning on sailing for Sydney tonight.”

  “I need to tell you what my wife said, she's had the news on in the car. This rioting is erupting all over the place. It's been in Sydney since last night and it seems it came up to Brisbane and the Gold Coast with airline passengers. I have no idea how they could get on a plane acting like that, but somehow it's spreading.”

  “And it’s spreading fast, the public transport is being stopped, it’s spreading whatever this is and everyone is recommended to stay home. Lucky it’s a stinking hot day, most people are at home in the air conditioning.”

  “You heard me on the phone, I need to get home and then meet my wife at Rhodes. I think you should sail straight back to somewhere safe.”

  “Give me a minute”, said Juan as he went below deck again to speak to his wife and returned a few moments later.

  “I asked Michelle to look on the satellite maps, we can take you as far as just near Fisherman's Island. From there you can use our Kayaks to go up the river. After that, I just don't know.”

  Juan went to the back of the boat and started pulling in the anchor, “I've been told by other boaters that the Moreton Bay Bar is much safer than the Gold Coast Bar. We were planning on going that way anyhow, so it’s on our way.”

  “Thank you. You're a lifesaver”, said Matthew.

  “Matthew, before you arrived, we were having lunch and then planning on getting in our kayaks and going to shore. We may have seen the riots and stopped, but we may not have. You've saved us too.”

  - 8 -

  Now that she knew her husband and son were safe she started to follow Matthew’s plan for getting all six of their children to safety.

  Emily Nicolls called her sister, “Annie, Annie.” Emily broke down crying. “Oh my God, Mum ran over a crazy man.”

  “What?”

  “Hang on, I have to put you on hands-free.”

  “Annie, it's mum here. There has been a riot at Marine Park. People are dead. I'm with your sisters and Sean and we're going to the country house.”

  “Where's Dad and Ethan? Didn't they go with you?”, Annie asked.

  “We got separated. We're in the car on Smith Street and Dad and Ethan are on a boat in the Estuary. Put the ABC News on and then ring us back, I need to call your sister Jessie. We all need to move fast.”

  - 9 -

  Grady Bloch switched off the TV. Grady was a hard-working computer programmer, or at least, that's what he thought of himself. In reality, he owned Intelligent Business Corporation, one of the up and coming business analytics companies, and hadn’t actually cut any computer code for years. Grady and his team had a product that was solving a lot of problems and making him a very rich man.

  Grady was confused. As a huge fan of Canadian Ice Hockey, he always watched the Sunday afternoon replay that aired on cable TV. The Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leaves were in the 4th quarter with the Canadiens in front, when the replay was interrupted by a news flash.

  Grady was regularly annoyed by the TV news. It was so dumbed down that he was gobsmacked by the conclusions to which the tabloid journalists arrived at. This time, however, it was the vision that was confusing.

  They were showing riots in Sydney. On the ground, vision from Circular Quay and Surry Hills showed the worst sort of physical violence he'd ever seen. Groups of people were attacking individuals who would then join in attacking others. He saw that some of the people went down and didn't get up again.

  Sydney was a full day's drive from Grady's home. At first the distance gave him a sense of relief that quickly disappeared when he saw aerial vision of Marine Park, which caught some horrific images of people killing and rioting. Marine Park was less than an hour from Grady's home.

  Karen Bloch had been married to Grady for eleven years and was familiar with his habits. He never changed the channel during a match. The change of programming caught Karen's attention and she entered the room as Grady placed the remote control on the TV unit.

  “What is it sweetie?”, she asked Grady. Grady didn't know what to say so he switched the TV back on.

  The news was focusing on an airplane that had arrived in Brisbane with sixteen sick people on board. An eight-year-old girl had bitten fifteen other passengers and they were all taken from the plane by ambulance.

  “It appears to be the same disease infecting people at Marine Park and in Sydney”, the reporter was saying. “This exclusive footage shows rioting in the car park at Marine Park, three men attacked a man.”

  The helicopter film zoomed in on a rather gory wound on the man's neck.

  “And moments later the same man is attacking an SUV after a mother and her children entered the vehicle.”

  The SUV attempts to avoid the man who jumps onto the front of the vehicle and is smashing at the windscreen. The car stops and the man slides off. He is run-over by the vehicle as it speeds up.

  “Despite injuries the man is up in a matter of seconds. He is last seen following his attackers into the entrance of Marine Park. Within minutes the whole of the theme park was overrun by rioting people.”

  This time Karen turned off the TV as Grady reached for his mobile phone.

  - 10 -

  Things weren’t going too well for Shane Price. For every bit of success that Grady had, it seemed that Shane had a disaster.

  He thought he had his ducks lined up with a successful innovative business, a beautiful wife who loved him, plans for overseas holidays and children. But in a single day, he had found out that his wife was fucking his best friend and his business partner had been stealing from him.

  It started three days before the outbreak when the Tax Office had called him. $75,000 dollars was owing on the employee, company and GST payments. Shane assured them that it had been paid, but then he confronted his business partner. His partner broke down and admitted that he’d gambled it on Blackjack and lost.

  After an argument, Shane called the bank and found out more bad news. The overdraft was overdrawn. Shane didn’t trust himself to be reasonable with his business partner so he went home to his wife.

  He was about to pull into the driveway when he noticed Geoff’s car parked in front of the house next door. Rather than pulling into the driveway, he parked on the street and went around to the back of the house.

  He looked in the bedroom window. There was a gap which annoyed him every morning by letting light in. He could hear the noise before he looked in, his wife was screwing his best friend. She was always rather vocal when she was having a good time.

  He walked back to his Hilux truck and reversed up the driveway to the garage. He opened the door and started attaching his camper trailer. He was no longer trying to be quiet.

  A few minutes later his wife came out the backdoor.

  “Hi honey, home early?”, she said. She sounded rather chirpy, he thought, almost sugar sweet. “What are you doing?”

  “I'm going camping.” He walked to the back of the garage and picked up his mountain bike and put in in the tray of his Ute.

  “But it’s Thursday honey, aren't you supposed to be at work.”

  He walked to the back of the garage with his keys in hand, he opened the gun safe and removed his two rifles. She watched him put them behind the passenger’s seat of the Ute.

  She repeated herself, “Aren't you supposed to be at work.”

  “I’ve had a disagreement with John”, he said.

  “A disagreement?”, she responded.

  “Yes, he’s stolen over $150k from the business. The Tax Office called me this morning.”

  “The Tax Office?”

  “Yes, they haven’t been paid, I didn’t think he’d have the balls to steal from me. He’s got bigger balls that I thought he’d have.”

  “What are you going to do?”, she asked.
<
br />   “I always thought he’d have smaller balls. How about Geoff? I always thought he’d have a pretty little dick”, he said, turning to look at her. “But you were making so much noise I figure that isn’t right.”

  She looked at him, shocked by his calmness.

  He got in his truck and drove down the driveway as his soon-to-be ex-wife collapsed against the fence crying. Just outside Brisbane, he withdrew his last five thousand from his personal savings account. He stopped in Firestone for lunch. At the supermarket, he spent up big on dry goods, small goods, fresh meat and cartons of canned fruit and vegetables. He also bought forty-eight cartons of long life milk.

  An hour later, he called into the pub at McPherson and bought six cartons of beer. Forty-five minutes later, he was setting up camp in the Sundown National Park. He popped his water turbine in the stream and began relaxing. The tax people said he had a month to sort things out before they took him to court. He had supplies for six weeks or so.

  He began to sit and wait for the days to glide by, while sipping on the first of his 288 cans of beer.

  - 11 -

  Linda and Kevin Cairns met on his first day of senior high school. First, they became friends, then boyfriend and girlfriend and eventually lovers.

  It had been thirty years since they first made love on a beach camping trip a couple of days after Linda's eighteenth birthday.

  She was feeling particularly sexy tonight. Her husband was a fantastic lover but he was finally asleep on the bed beside her. After two hours of amorous activities he had collapsed with exhaustion. Couldn't blame the boy, she was an actively good lover herself.

  She was quite content, thank you very much. A generous man, he had given his partner of thirty years a night she'd remember.

  There's something special about being away on holidays with the man you love. Enjoying each other's company throughout the day and pleasing each other in a different bed each night. Having sex in a strange bed always seemed a little naughty.

  Linda thought about the European holiday they'd had for their twentieth wedding anniversary. She'd been pregnant with their daughter when they got married and the Europe trip was their first big overseas holiday.

  She'd already thought of Kevin as her husband for five years when they found out she was pregnant. They went to the Byron Bay Lighthouse and had a civil wedding service with only their closest friends and family in attendance.

  There had been Humpback whales breaching during the short ceremony. Sounds a bit ridiculous, but they had the photographs to prove it.

  That night they shagged like there was no tomorrow, she smiled in remembrance.

  'If I keep thinking like this I'll need to wake Kevin up again', she thought, smirking to herself. 'What's wrong with you tonight, you naughty girl'.

  She cast her mind back again to their most recent trip to Europe. Two months with Kevin and their daughter Sharon and seeing Sir Paul McCartney perform live in Liverpool. That should have been the highlight of the trip.

  That night, after the concert, the three of them walked down to the Liverpool docks, an old industrial area that had been gentrified with high-end restaurants and bars. They had a late-night dinner and Kevin got more than a little tipsy.

  He'd told her, in front of the waiter and their daughter that he loved every second he got to spend with her and that she made his life complete. Everyone cried, including the waiter.

  THAT was the highlight of the trip.

  Tomorrow was going to be a long day. They had a three-hour drive to the zoo where they had booked to stay for two nights. Linda dozed off, content with her life.

  - 12 -

  Linda and Kevin rose early, had a huge breakfast at the hotel and started the drive to the Zoo. Just after nine, they checked in at the visitor’s centre and dropped off their bags. This was the morning of the day of the breakout at Marine Park.

  While Kevin was dealing with the hotel check-in, Linda went outside and looked at the Siamang Apes.

  “Those monkeys are gorgeous”, Kevin said when he joined her a few minutes later. “They're apes”, she responded, “They don't have tails.”

  She took her husband by the hand and they started the bicycle tour of the parklands.

  The first stop they made was the Hyena enclosure. Kevin felt repulsed by the foul looking animals, but Linda didn't take much notice of them. She was on the phone to their daughter who was attending University in Amsterdam. Some boy she'd been seeing was moving back to London and she was devastated.

  They rode down the pathway and looked at the lion, it was in a huge enclosure all by himself. The feeding demonstration was happening and the zookeeper talking, “We also have this backup feeding system for most of the animals. We’re on a flood plain here and the town has been cut off for as long as two weeks in the past, so the animals can get a single feed each day from the unit. It’s enough for six weeks of backup feed but it’s purely nutrition, fairly tasteless. In spite of that, this fella keeps on using his to top up what we feed him so we’re keeping an eye on his weight. He’s slightly up at the moment so we’re looking at reducing his fresh meet for a few months to bring him back down.”

  Kevin grew bored with the zookeeper so they headed on to the next display. At lunchtime, they received a text message from the onsite hotel saying that their room was ready. They cycled over to the hotel and ordered a small room service lunch.

  Linda was on the phone to their daughter again and Kevin was feeling bored. He'd promised himself a rest from technology. He was usually on his iPhone, Mac or the cable news service, but on this trip, he had managed to leave his phone switched off.

  He looked over at Linda, “Yes baby, I know, but you're only twenty-two. The time apart might let you both know how you feel about each other.”

  Kevin rolled his eyes and went to get his phone out of his bag, but before he could get to it, Linda was off the phone. “Sharon has broken up with her boyfriend, she began. “He's going back to London because apparently he thinks Amsterdam is too dangerous.”

  After a brief discussion about their daughter, they went back to continue in the zoo.

  As they rode down to the Giraffe enclosure, Kevin was wondering why Amsterdam was suddenly dangerous. His daughter always commented on how safe she felt.

  - 13 -

  Tom Lewis had the best job in the world. His boss was a computer nerd that made more money than he could spend and didn’t bother Tom too often.

  Six months earlier, he'd become the manager of a boutique winery in the Granite Belt near the Queensland border. To Tom's boss, the winery was a place to relax, grow some grapes, bottle some wine and give the tourists a nice place to sleep. Tom thought it might also be a big fat juicy tax deduction.

  The best part about Tom’s job was the freedom; Tom’s boss had no idea about viniculture or running a bed and breakfast but he’d hired Tom because he knew how to do those things.

  The main house could accommodate twenty-four people in luxurious comfort. Each of the four accommodation suites had its own bathroom and enough beds for a family of six. The resort-style kitchen provided breakfast for hungry families and the main dining room was a busy place when the holiday season was in full swing.

  His boss had arranged for the conversion of the old wine sheds to self-contained accommodation large enough for another five families. It had been a busy six months having the modern sheds for wine production installed and the older rustic sheds converted for guests.

  Finally, the first groups of visitors were planned for the following weekend. Six families from Bloch's computing business were coming up to test the new facilities before the rental season. Typical of Bloch, he had also four-walled the cabins in the camping facilities for the rest of his staff in the neighbouring property. Deliveries of supplies had been arriving for the last few days.

  Tom was busy, but he was confident that the facilities were ready for the test.

  “Honey, Mr. Bloch's on the phone.” That was unusual. Another
reason Tom liked his job was that Bloch only ever contacted him during office hours. He had promised that there wouldn't be much work to do out-of-hours and true to his word, there wasn't.

  “Tom, I'm sorry to call you on a Sunday evening like this. Have you seen the news at all?”

  “No, Grady, I haven't. Is there something wrong?”

  “I don't know. There seems to be some sort of civil disobedience going on, if that’s the word for it. I'm going to come up to the Winery with my staff if I can get them. I think we should see how this stuff pans out. I think you should have a look at the news, and then I've got some things I want you to prepare...”