by Mira Grant
A red-faced woman whose eyes were puffy from recent tears shoved her way forward, shouting, “Those bastards pretend we’re secure, but we’re not! They pretend nothing can get through the fence, but they’re wrong! Then they go threatening legal action because somebody finally did what we’ve all been dreaming of doing for years, and where were they with their legal actions when my Paul was disappearing, huh? Where were they then?”
“Oh, Lord,” said Rey, covering his face with one hand.
I glanced quickly in his direction. “Care to explain?”
“That’s Karen Langmore. She’s a local—very local. Her family lived out here before the Rising, and they’ve never considered moving anywhere else. She thinks a kangaroo came over the fence and stole her son a year ago.”
“I don’t think!” the woman—Karen—shouted. “I know! Your fence isn’t keeping them out, it’s keeping us stupid and snowed, so that we don’t move out of range!”
“If that’s true, why hasn’t anyone else been attacked?” asked Rachel. She had the Irwin trick of pitching her voice from the back of her throat down cold: She didn’t seem to be shouting, but everyone could hear her. “Why haven’t we been dealing with outbreaks on a monthly basis? There’s no way those animals are getting past the fence! All you’re doing is whipping folks into a useless panic, and people are going to get hurt!”
“If you won’t protect us from the infected, we’ll have to protect ourselves!” shouted a man.
Rachel turned toward him, eyes narrowed. “Are you making threats toward the local wildlife? Because that’s against the law.”
“I’m not threatening anyone,” the man snapped. “I’m saying that sometimes, people have to matter more than animals, no matter how ‘endangered’ those animals are.”
The guards were starting to mutter mutinously. If this didn’t break up soon, it was going to turn ugly for everyone.
Newsies are supposed to stay above the story whenever possible, but I knew from bitter experience that “staying above the story” wouldn’t keep the bullets from flying in my direction. “If I may?” I said, stepping forward so that I was between Rachel and the crowd. “Hello. I don’t know how many of you know me, but my name is Mahir Gowda. I’m a journalist from England, and I’ve come to see the rabbit-proof fence.”
The crowd grumbled and glared, but no one shouted, and no one shot at me. For the moment, I was willing to take that as a victory.
“I will be reporting fairly and honestly on what I see here. The Australian government has no authority over me once I leave your country, and I’m too well known to simply ‘disappear.’ I assure you, if I find that your concerns are founded, I will be trumpeting them to the heavens before anyone realizes that they should be devoting resources to stopping me.”
“They’ll just buy you off like they do everyone else!”
“My integrity is not for sale,” I said witheringly. “If there is a problem—if my research confirms that there is a problem—then I will report on it. Of that, you have my word.”
“He’s not the only one,” said Olivia, stepping forward to stand beside me. “But this isn’t the right way to make us want to tell your stories. You’re going to get us all shot, and then who’s going to tell the truth? Nobody. You’ll bury your lede in a hail of bullets, and no one will care enough to dig it up.”
“Not only that, but if you do not disperse within the next thirty seconds, I’m having you all arrested for forming an infection hazard near the fence,” said Rachel. I glanced her way, startled. She wasn’t looking at me, or at Olivia; all her attention was on the crowd. “Go home. Don’t do this again. Next time, you won’t have a bunch of idiot journalists looking to sniff out a scandal just standing by. Next time, somebody’s getting hurt.”
“It won’t be who you think,” snapped Karen… but there was no heat in it. The wind had been stolen from her sails by logic and by danger, and she was just shouting for the sake of hearing herself. Someone in the crowd put an arm around her shoulders, tugging her away, and she went without a fight.
The rest of the crowd dispersed quickly after that, although not without more than a few glares and muttered expletives. Rachel and the other guards remained exactly where they were, none of them moving so much as a muscle until the last of the prospective rioters had moved out of view. I breathed out, relieved, only to choke on my own exhale as Rachel grabbed the front of my shirt and hauled me toward her.
“What in the blue suffering fuck was that?” she demanded. “Are you an idiot, or are you just too convinced of your own invincibility to see when you’re risking your life for absolutely bloody nothing?”
“I would find it much easier to answer your questions if you weren’t physically threatening me,” I said. My voice came out surprisingly level. “Please let go.”
To my relief, Rachel did. “Those people are all noise and no action. You had no reason to step up like that. You could have actually triggered the damn riot.”
“I’ve never seen them this bad before,” said Rey.
I blinked as I glanced his way. In all the excitement, I’d almost forgotten that he was there. “You mean this has happened before?” I asked.
“About once a week since Karen decided that it was kangaroos that were to blame for her Paul disappearing,” said Rachel grimly. “She gets everyone worked up over the injustice, and then someone remembers that we keep live specimens in the biological containment facility, and there’s a march on the place, like we won’t be standing in the way with guns in our hands. Maybe they’re hoping to eventually wear us down, convince us that we should ‘forget’ to show up where we’re supposed to be. I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t care. She’s a grieving woman. That doesn’t give her the freedom to disrupt the peace.”
“Please don’t take this as me siding with her, but… is there any chance she’s correct? Any chance at all?”
Rachel sighed, giving me a weary look. “Well, I don’t know. Which do you think is more likely: A zombie kangaroo somehow found a hole in the fence, snuck through without attracting any attention from its fellows, made its way through the town without being seen, ignored multiple easy, delicious targets, and finally stole a toddler from inside his bedroom? Or something else happened? I don’t know what that something else might be. Maybe the kid’s father came back. Maybe it was a stranger abduction. We looked into it and we didn’t find anything, but if it was an infected kangaroo, it was the smartest damn zombie I’ve ever heard of, and we should just start evacuating the continent now. Humans are finished in Australia if the zombie kangaroos are learning how to open windows.”
I nodded. “I think you’re probably right about that. So what set them off today?”
“I can answer that,” said Rey. We all turned to look at him. He shrugged. “We retrieved two bullets from the second downed kangaroo that we brought in last night. Neither of them was from one of the guns issued to our staff, or to the guards responsible for maintaining the fence line. Which means—”
“Someone inside the fence is shooting at the kangaroos?” Olivia sounded utterly horrified, like this was a rejection of the natural order. “But how can they even line up a shot? They don’t have access to the sniper towers.”
“There are rooftops. Trees. And maybe they do have access to a sniper tower. Not everyone in the deployment is happy about how wildlife is prioritized out here. Somebody might bribe one of the shifts to let them up into a tower that isn’t scheduled to be manned during that period. It’d be easy enough to sneak out again, after you were done getting out your aggressions on the local kangaroos.”
“Why would someone who didn’t like the law live out here?” I asked. “Wouldn’t it be easier to move into the city, where there’s less risk of surprise zombie kangaroos?”
“This is their home,” said Rachel. “People like Karen, they’ve been out here for generations. They don’t want to move to ‘civilization,’ they want civilization to piss off and let them have
their land back. But since the fence isn’t going to move, unless it’s to expand, that’s not going to happen.”
“Ten years ago, the fence line was two hundred yards farther that way,” said Rey, indicating the land beyond the fence. “The kangaroo population went up, and the fence was shifted. Eventually, they’ll have to move the whole outpost in order to give the mobs room to move without stepping on each other.”
I stared at him for a moment. Then, slowly, I shook my head. “Only in Australia,” I said.
Olivia grinned. “Got that right.”
2.
Jack and Juliet returned from the airfield about an hour later. Olivia filled them in on the events of the afternoon while I transcribed my notes, trying to get the order of events straight in my head even as I mirrored a backup to the main After the End Times server. I wasn’t going to lose this information, even if I somehow lost my life out in this terrifying last frontier.
When I was done typing, I began the slightly less mechanical task of researching. A search of the public Australian government databases turned up no fewer than two hundred seventeen documents relating to the post-Rising rabbit-proof fence. Everything from the material requirements for extensions to the rules enforced within a quarter mile of the fence line was there, thoroughly documented and ready for review. As I read, I found myself more and more impressed with the sheer audacity of the situation. According to the law—the law which had been voted on and approved by the majority of the Australian population—anyone who was shot by a licensed fence guard within the zone that had been legally defined as “on the fence line” would be charged after the fact with disorderly conduct. You must have done something wrong, after all, if one of the guards had felt the need to shoot you to make it stop.
There were rather stringent rules governing the behavior of the guards themselves, and they were rotated regularly between postings, presumably to keep corruption at a minimum. That didn’t change the fact that, had Rachel opened fire into the crowd and mowed down every single man, woman, and child who lived in the nameless little town, she would not have been at fault, while every single one of them would have been charged with posthumous offenses.
It seemed draconian. But the more I read about the process of expanding and maintaining the fence, the more I realized that it was actually surprisingly liberal. No one was required to live in the fence line encampments; many of the biological containment facilities were staffed purely by the guards, scientists, and researchers who had chosen to devote their lives to the Kellis-Amberlee infection. Towns like the one where we were staying were a rarity, occupied by people who refused to let anything as minor as a zombie infection change their ways of life. Australia allowed these people to stay in their homes—or close to their homes; sometimes the original homes had ended up behind the fence, due to unstoppable outbreaks—and asked only that they follow the rules for safety near the fence. Given the country’s track record with indigenous peoples and running them off their land, this was far more enlightened than they had any real reason to be, or history of being.
The conflict came from the natural point of friction: the interaction of the human population with the native wildlife, which was protected by more laws than I would have believed possible. Not everyone shared Jack and Olivia’s matter-of-fact “we’re easier to replace” attitude, and some people were downright resentful of the fact that an infected kangaroo was considered more valuable than an uninfected human. It was an unusual perspective, but one which made more sense the more I read about the restructuring of Australia after the Rising. The people who survived the outbreaks didn’t want to lose the things that made their country unique just because they’d shared a zombie apocalypse with the rest of the world. That meant conservation; that meant looking for answers. And yes, that meant allowing infected kangaroos to occasionally break loose and eat the citizenry.
More people were satisfied with the current regime than I would have thought possible. That said something interesting about the people of Australia—and it raised the question of what, exactly, would happen if the tide of public opinion ever happened to turn.
3.
We ate dinner at the small café where we’d had breakfast. Jack and Juliet seemed to have come to a new understanding, or maybe it was just another iteration of an old understanding; they ate while gazing at each other, neither of them contributing to the conversation. Olivia took up the slack, chattering a mile a minute, until I could barely keep up with her rapid changes of subject and apparent mood. After I finished my meal—a passable mushroom and vegetable pie, made somewhat unusual by the inclusion of chunks of baked pumpkin alongside the more customary turnip and potato—I excused myself and walked back to the hotel to make an early night of things.
The lobby was still deserted. Except for the four of us, I hadn’t seen a single sign of life inside the hotel proper. On the street outside, yes, but inside, no. I shook my head, chuckling a little at the haunted house ridiculousness of it all as I walked up the stairs.
Had I been paying more attention, I might have noticed that the door to Olivia and Juliet’s room was standing slightly ajar, enough that an observer would have a clear view of the hallway as I walked toward my own room. I might have seen the subtle signs that someone had come this way: the indentations in the carpet, the disturbance in the air. I was wrapped up in my thoughts, however, and the first indication that I was not alone came when the hand reached out from behind me, pressing a curiously scented cloth over my mouth and nose.
Chloroform, you idiot, I thought, and then my eyes were closed, and the world was an unimportant distraction, and I thought nothing past that point.
4.
I returned to consciousness to find myself being jarred viciously by the motion of a vehicle which had not, if I was any judge of such things, been maintained properly, or indeed, maintained at all. Keeping my eyes shut, I attempted to move my arms, and found, to my delight, that they responded easily and normally to my commands. I didn’t know who was around me or how many other passengers this hell-bound conveyance might have, but I needed to know my options. I slid my hand carefully to my hip, verifying the presence of a buckled seat belt. Whoever had abducted me wasn’t intending to kill me accidentally, then. That should probably have been reassuring. In the moment, however, it merely made me tired.
“Are you awake, or are you just getting ready to do some sleep masturbation?” asked Olivia, close enough that she might as well have been leaning over my shoulder.
Relief flooded over me. Clearly, my would-be attacker had been interrupted by my traveling companions, and we were fleeing for the airfield. “Olivia?” I turned toward her voice, opening my eyes at the same time. “Did you… see…”
We were not driving toward the airfield, unless the airfield had moved and was now located in a large, empty stretch of grass, with no road or streetlights anywhere in sight. Olivia, who was strapped in next to me in the back of what appeared to be a fortified military Jeep, offered me a wan smile, only barely visible in the glow coming from the instrument panel in the front seat. There were at least two more people riding with us—the driver, and a third passenger in the seat next to him. I could see the backs of their heads, but not their faces.
“I did see who attacked you, yeah,” Olivia said. “He helped us get you out to the car. I’m really sorry about this. There wasn’t any other good way to convince you that we needed to break about a dozen—”
“Two dozen,” said the driver: Rey.
“—sorry, two dozen laws about travel beyond the fence.” Olivia shrugged. “This way, you can legitimately say that it wasn’t your choice if you decide to bring us up on charges.”
“Assuming you live that long,” said Juliet from the front passenger seat.
“Well, I see the gang’s all here,” I said, with surprising steadiness. Apparently, my terror was translating into bland annoyance. “How did you convince Jack to stay behind while you were drugging and abducting me?”
>
“Oh, we didn’t,” said Olivia. “He’s on the roof with a gun in case anything decides to flip the Jeep while we’re out here.”
Words failed me. I stared at her, hoping that my expression would convey all the things my voice was refusing to let me say. Much to my irritation, she laughed. I scowled. Apparently, silence and staring were not the way to get my point across.
“Don’t be so British, Mahir,” she said. “We’re perfectly safe.”
“No we’re not,” said Juliet. “We’re driving across open terrain inside the rabbit-proof, kangaroo-proof, zombie-proof fence, which is there for a reason, and it’s not an aesthetic one. We’re in a ludicrous amount of danger. We would be in a ludicrous amount of danger even if we weren’t in Australia, where even the things that aren’t infected want to kill us all. There’s no point in lying to the man. He’s not an idiot.”
I turned to stare at the back of Juliet’s head. She twisted in her seat to meet my gaze. She wasn’t wearing her sunglasses anymore—the lack of light on this side of the fence must have made them unnecessary, and her night vision would make her an invaluable lookout. Looking into her eyes was like trying to stare down a shark, implacable and ageless.
“Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Reporter. I know how dangerous what we’re doing right now really is, and I wouldn’t be going along with it if Jack hadn’t asked me to. But that doesn’t mean I’m on your side in this. You’re going to see what we came out here to see, whether you like it or not.”
“Why are you people all assuming I wouldn’t have liked it?” I demanded, aggravation bringing my voice back from wherever it had fled. “Did any of you think to ask me before you drugged me and loaded me into the back of your car? I might have agreed to do this openly!”