The Colony

by Lang, Christopher

  These two variants have made the spread very easy. People get on planes with a light fever, and by the time the plane lands they're crazy and biting and attacking other passengers. These passengers get infected and go crazy and bite people, who then get sick or go crazy and the cycle continues.

  Bevan's blockade was the first that Grady's group came across. They didn’t come across any others until they got to Firestone.

  Firestone is a town of about twelve hundred people. Nice town, nice people. A beautiful aspect looking down from the top of the Great Dividing Range and across seventy kilometres of land towards the coast.

  Firestone had placed a blockade at the top of the range and was forbidding passage. Armed guards ordered vehicles to the north rather than directly through town.

  Grady handled this one differently. He didn't tell them exactly where his group was travelling, but convinced them that they were plague-free and that they were traveling through to the other side of town towards the Rhodes area.

  The escort through Firestone politely but firmly told Grady not to come back. Grady agreed. This was an agreement that ultimately, he did not keep.

  - 39 -

  As Raymond went through Town Hall Station his lights lit up a herd in the darkness. ‘Ho, this could be really good’, he thought.

  He stopped his bike and put it on the stand. Unslinging his Steyr, he shot into the group. They all went down. The alpha female of the group kept crawling across the train platform towards him. He was about eye level with the woman, who was at least five meters away, and inching towards him.

  Raymond had no understanding of compassion. That's for wimps, but occasionally he had respect for someone. ‘This girl has big balls.’

  He nodded to her, got back on his bike and rode towards Wynyard. A man with compassion might have put her out of her misery. Raymond's respect was a whole different thing.

  - 40 -

  Valerie Nicolls heard the vehicles coming before she saw them. They were as numerous as expected.

  Tom Lewis had been to see Valerie early that morning and told her that he was expecting a crowd of people along with Grady Boch. Valerie had only met Boch once and thought that Tom was a much more likable man. Boch was a bit too blunt and to the point for her liking.

  Her husband, Matthew, and Tom genuinely liked each other and Matthew thought Boch was okay too. The three of them had worked together to make repairs on the common fence between their properties earlier in the year.

  The Rhodes property had been left to Valerie by her father. Although they ran beef on its 400 acres, they only came up every month or so. A live-in property manager lived on the lower 10 acres with his wife and teenage daughter.

  Valerie thought that perhaps there was safety in numbers. Little did she know that someone close to her was already infected with the plague.

  - 41 -

  Raymond rode straight through Wynyard station and out into the daylight. He went up onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and before the southern pier, he stopped to admire the view.

  He had always hated Circular Quay. All those Muppets catching trains, going to work, and taking photos, but today there was none of that. Herds of Plague Victims wandered around. The steps of the Opera House had masses of people on them looking for someone to attack. The Bridge itself was clear of moving cars. Here and there, cars were stopped, and a major crash had occurred on the onramp behind him. Herds wandered amongst the carnage, following the Alpha Male or Female, the strongest or fastest PV in the group.

  “Time to go then”, he rode on towards his meeting.

  - 42 -

  Ethan and his father had a busy evening preparing for the trip to their beef farm near Rhodes. By eight o'clock that night, they were ready. Matthew needed to sleep, so they made the decision to leave at 3:00 am.

  By 3:15, they had picked up Juan's Kayaks and were tying them to Matthew's Holden Ute. There were no Police blockades that early in the morning and daylight found them at the Firestone blockade.

  Things at Firestone had changed since Valerie went through two days before. It was under siege. The police had been dispatched to put a stop to their barricade, but the people of Firestone were firm. No Plague Victims would be allowed to infect the fine people of Firestone. Firestone was determined to stay a Plague free zone. They would have put up a No PV sign if they thought the PVs could read it.

  That was a scene that Matthew wanted to avoid, so he followed the road to the north, with his son following in the SUV. They looped back via Leslie Dam crossing the border near Texas. From there, they travelled across to Donaldson to stop at McPherson for fuel.

  The plan was to top up their petrol tanks before the last stretch to Rhodes. The trip that took Grady Boch three hours would take Matthew and Ethan six and a half.

  - 43 -

  Michael Taylor was fifty-seven years old and lived by himself. He’d had a wife and three lovely children but his wife had had enough of his indiscretions and left him when the kids were all under five. He just couldn’t keep it in his trousers but that was over twenty-five years ago and he hadn’t seen any of his now adult children for over five years.

  He had no TV and thought the internet was for idiots, books were his obsession so he’d been home all weekend reading. Sunday night he’d come down with diarrhoea and vomiting. As a Specialist Physician, he knew he needed to be away from people so at 5:00am Monday morning he’d called the office on his wall mounted rotary dial telephone and left a message on the answering machine, he’d be away for at least two days and left his number in case they needed to call. He’d never really got the concept that they had his number and he didn’t need to leave it.

  He wasn’t a stupid man, far from it, but he thought technology decreased the joys of life. He liked reading, eating in nice restaurants, bushwalking, playing board games and women. He liked women.

  At work, he was highly regarded and did his work well. His patients loved him even if they thought it was amusing that he wrote out their prescriptions in an old-style pad and looked things up in a printed MiMs.

  He liked the old ways best and his only car was a 1975 930 turbo, worth a fortune and immaculately maintained, he bought it cheap in the late 1980’s. The car did less than five thousand kilometres per year, so he didn’t really drive it every day but he’d still had the engine rebuilt only two years earlier. He believed in preventative maintenance.

  On the first Wednesday morning of the plague he got up and showered, brushed his teeth, put on his suit and left the house at 5:55am for the ten-minute walk to Sunnybank Train Station. A fairly wealthy man he lived a simple life, had no debt and had lived in his current home for over twenty years.

  A few streets away Matthew and Ethan had left their home while Michael was still asleep.

  He crossed the four lane Beenleigh Road and went into the park, it occurred to him that there were no cars on the road. Although that was very unusual he assumed roadworks, or a change of traffic light sequencing had given him a huge gap to cross the road in.

  The park was empty, there was usually a group doing Tai Chi but they too were absent. He looked at his fifty-year-old Rolex watch, 6:01am 15th date. Yep, not a public holiday, he was beginning to feel like Rip van Winkle, had he missed a few days? What was going on? He’d ask the station master when he bought his ticket. He refused to buy into the electronic tickets and bought a paper ticket every day. For cash, of course.

  Unknown to him, he’d partially transposed a trip that Matthew and Ethan had taken the afternoon before but Michael was oblivious to the danger all around him. As he walked along the timber walkway that crossed the creek he heard shouts of anger coming from the football field a kilometre to the east, he entered the carpark of the railway station and that’s when he started to really wonder what the hell was going on. Normally at this time of morning the car park was empty, perhaps a car or two near the platform entrance but this was just weird. It wasn’t full but there were at least thirty cars scattered around the
carpark, properly parked as if left over from the day before. Had their owners had forgotten to come and pick them up after work.

  He walked to the stairs and headed up and across the bridge, he looked down on the platform and saw four people at the end of the platform just standing there having some sort of silent conversation. Unknown to Michael three of the cars in the carpark belonged to these men. Things were feeling hinky, but he was thinking it was because the virus he’d had, was still affecting him in some way.

  He went to the ticket office to buy his ticket from Geoff, “Hello Geoff, good to see you.” ‘Thank God something is still normal’, he thought. Geoff was standing in the ticket office with his back to the window, he turned around and then Michael was finally shocked into action.

  Geoff was furious, looked dangerous, huge chunks of his ZZ Top beard had been torn out, he looked like a junkyard dog and lunged at the ticket window. Michael stepped back from the window, frightened of Geoff’s actions. He turned to start running back up the stairs when the four people from up the platform attacked him. Michael gave a good fight and managed to almost get to the top of the stairs until they finally beat him and bit him to death.

  About the time of Michael Taylor’s demise Tabitha Costello was a few minutes into her morning run, in spite of the bits and pieces she’d seen on the news she was determined to keep her running up. Next year’s Boston Marathon was her goal and next week’s Melbourne event was a qualifier.

  She left the house that she shared with her parents and started running down the hill. Her parents were in Oxford for another six months, it was her father’s sabbatical year and he was reading there or something like that. She had no interest in her father’s academic career, she thought Shakespeare was as boring as bat shit. Stephen King, John Wyndham, Max Brooks and Nevil Shute were much more her style.

  She was doing her short route today as she’d slept in. She normally ran down Boundary Road and around the Archerfield Airport perimeter and then back home. Today she was going the opposite way, up Boundary Road to Station Road. Then she’d sprint down Station Road to Sunnybank Station and then back home. She had a queue of data simulations to run today and had to get back home to kick the first ones off.

  There were terrible things on the TV but that woman with her family at the Marine Park gave her inspiration. She’d outrun the creeps and fled to safety with her kids. Tabitha was quick, Tabitha was lithe, Tabitha was magic. Tabitha could outrun the creeps if she came across them.

  She ran down Station Road without seeing anyone or any cars and jumped up the first three steps before turning right to go across the bridge that was above the station.

  ‘What is that?’ she thought. There was blood all over the ground up ahead. She stopped running and walked slowly forward. On the stairs, just beyond the pool of blood she saw a hand projecting. She listened and couldn’t hear any noise. She crept forward and glanced around the corner, looking down the stairway.

  It was horrible, a late middle-aged man was laying on the stairs, he was well dressed in a chambray work-shirt and chinos with a cravat around his neck. His face was destroyed, his teeth smashed in and one of his eyes was laying on his chest.

  The four men were at the end of the platform and spotted her through the steel mesh. Their feet slapping down on the pavement sounded loud in the silent morning. Her runners had been much quieter but they were at least thirty meters down the platform and they had to get up the stairs also.

  In spite of the shock she didn’t freeze, she immediately started sprinting back the way she’d come, as she jumped back down the three stairs the four men were just reaching the bottom of the stairs.

  She ran up Station Road and at the Oasis Gardens she passed a man in a suit coming out of the security gate.

  “Run”, she shouted, “Get back inside. They’re coming.” She pointed back at the men as she ran past. The man looked at the men one hundred metres back running towards him and got the picture, he keyed in the security code and was back in the gate before they got to him.

  The creeps lost interest in Tabitha and started lunging at the man through the fence, he dropped his suitcase and umbrella on the ground and ran back inside his house.

  Tabitha continued home and was back inside her parent’s home ten minutes later, she showered and sat on the couch patting Toppy, her Burmese cat. Once she was calm the tears came.

  And so, it went on. For most people, it went the way of Michael Taylor in those first few days. But some like Tabatha and the man in the suit stayed alive at least for a while until hunger, thirst or loneliness drove them out of their homes into danger.

  - 44 -

  The Plague had started slow, but the various modes of infection had increased its spread. The day before the incident at the Marine Park a light plane took off from Canberra airport bound for Donaldson New South Wales, it's only occupants, the pilot and a family of three.

  Mum was a senior Professor in Climate Change leading the CSIRO in Donaldson. She had spent all day Friday and most of Saturday morning in meetings with Government Ministers.

  For a change, Dad was off work and paid for his daughter and himself to go with Mum to Canberra. The young Miss hadn't seen the grandparents for months. Grandma felt the need to feed her up on chocolate and berate their son-in-law for allowing their daughter and granddaughter to move away from Canberra to nasty old rural New South Wales.

  “There's more to life than a career, you know.” “She is growing up without knowing us.” “What is there to do it that little town?”

  Mum, Dad, and the young Miss loved Donaldson. They were welcomed from day one. The freshness, lack of traffic and variety of people and jobs kept the Young Miss enthralled. There was a man in Donaldson who was an old-school blacksmith. The family made an excuse to visit his workshop at least once a month.

  There was an incident at the park in Canberra. Early on Saturday morning, Grandpa took the Young Miss to the park and another child bit her. A nasty bite from a nasty little boy who bit four other children before his parents took him away.

  But this was not just a normal childhood incident, her parents flew her flew back home and the Young Miss was in the hospital in Donaldson by three in the afternoon.

  The tea lady was bitten. “The kid just went fucking crazy”, she told her husband that night. He ran the pub at McPherson, and that night while he slept, his cute young wife also went crazy. He woke up with her on top of him and thought he was going to get lucky. She bit at his jugular so hard that blood gushed down her throat. She coughed on it and splattered it all over his face.

  McPherson was now the first place in Queensland with Plague Victims. At four in the morning the cute young tea lady and her not so cute husband found their way out of their home looking for tasty snacks. This is how it played out, in the twenty-four hours before the incidents in Martin Place and the Marine Park were all over the news, the plague had already spread all over the country.

  The plague was now fifteen kilometres where from where Tom Lewis slept. In twelve hours’ time his boss would be calling him with some very strange news.

  - 45 -

  Linda Cairn's mobile phone rang in the middle of the night.

  “Mum? Hello mum. I've only got a few minutes.”

  “Hello sweetheart, are you alright?”, Linda asked her daughter. “I’ve been trying to ring you.”

  “I'm in Dubai. I went to the airport after we last spoke and got a flight. The airline was only letting Australian's on so it's half empty.”

  “We're not getting off the plane at all. They're just refuelling and putting food on. I can see people with machine guns all around the plane, we're not at a gate. We can’t get off but they are allowing us to fly on.”

  “Mum, where are you?”

  Linda explained where they were and then asked when her daughter’s plane will land.

  “We were going to land in Brisbane, but Brisbane is closed down now. We've been told that we're going to land in some airport
outside Toowoomba. Corfe Army Base, I think it’s called.”

  “I'll call you when I land. Mum. I love you. Tell Dad I love him too.”

  - 46 -

  John Bottle sick also. He knew what happening to him, he thought he might soon become a crazy. His brain was getting hot. He could feel it. Not just a temperature but localised heat in the middle of his head.

  He'd kept how ill he was from everyone. He thought that Cairns woman might know how bad he was, but everyone else was fooled.

  Once everyone was settled in, John Bottle took the opportunity to call his son.

  "Where are you son?”, John asked.

  "I'm in my apartment but I'm getting sick. At work one of the women went crazy, she bit me and now it’s infected. The infection from Carman’s bite is spreading up my arm. I think I have blood poisoning”, he told his father, his voice was rising, he was panicking.