Surviving the Evacuation

by Frank Tayell

“That big bloke hit Pete just after we arrived, just for being American,” Corrie said.

  “Do you think they’ll come back?” Pete asked.

  “Them or someone else,” Corrie said. “They aren’t the first to come here asking to fly away. There were a lot more after those cargo planes arrived. But I think, as word about tomorrow’s departure spreads, and the closer it gets to night, people are wising up to the idea that the train is the safest and surest way to get out of here.”

  Pete looked over at the setting sun. He should get some sleep. Two in the morning, and the next cargo flight, would come soon enough. What he wanted was a few minutes to talk with Corrie about the pilots and all the rest, but he wasn’t going to get it.

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind, I’m going to find somewhere to sleep,” Pete said.

  “No worries,” Bramley said.

  Pete turned back to the runway. The rising buzz of insects told him he wasn’t going to manage to sleep outside. He turned back towards the road. The buzz wasn’t insects, but engines.

  Stevie’s truck bounced into view, but it wasn’t alone. A junkyard of dust-coated trucks, utes, and cars followed in its wake, speeding up as they drew nearer.

  “They’re not going to stop,” Pete hissed, but they did, in a spray of dirt, with Stevie’s truck ten metres from the barricade, and with a soft thump as one of the cars behind didn’t brake in time.

  Bramley kept her rifle lowered as passengers poured out of every vehicle, but she held it tight, her finger not far from the trigger. Kate Morsten climbed out from the lead truck’s passenger seat, Stevie from the driver’s side. They were unarmed, and so was everyone else that Pete could see, but the way that some were glancing at the backseats and truck beds suggested that could change quickly.

  “The airport is closed,” Bramley said. “Only military traffic is allowed in and out.”

  “We’ll get to that,” Kate Morsten said. “Why are those two here?”

  “Because they volunteered,” Bramley said.

  “It’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?” Morsten said, though she was speaking to the mob. “A plane from America crashes, bringing the zombies with it. Two Americans turn up, and now they’re guarding our airfield.”

  Pete wanted to ask what she wanted, whether there was anyone among them who could fly, where they thought they would go. He was sure she had no good answer, but he didn’t ask, because the sound of his accent would only push the mob further towards violence.

  “No one is leaving here by plane,” Bramley said. “There’s a road convoy—”

  “We heard,” Morsten cut in. “Why should we leave? This is our home. Our country. They came here, bringing the nightmare with them. This is their fault, not ours. Their problem, not ours. Why should we suffer?”

  This was about to get bad. Pete could see it, and wasn’t sure, when it did, whether he should run, or fight. And fight who, and with what?

  “Hey, what are you lot doing here?” Doctor Dodson demanded, running onto the road. “Why aren’t you home, looking after your kids? This is no way to set an example.”

  “We’re here because—” Morsten began, but Doctor Dodson cut her off.

  “Do you want to storm the airfield?” he asked. “Kill us all, is that your plan? You’ve got the numbers. But then what? Where’s your pilot? I can’t see one. Are you going to point a gun at one of us, make us fly? Maybe we will. But what do you think happens when you land? I’ll tell you what’ll happen. You’ll be handcuffed, put up against a wall, and shot. You don’t want a plane, you want a time machine. We all do. What you’ve got are trucks and cars. You think you’ll stand a better chance on your own? Go. Drive away. Take your chances in the outback. Or join the convoy tomorrow. Or, maybe, you could try to help us as we help each other ride out this storm.”

  The people at the rear were wavering, but Morsten and Stevie had come too far to back down, even if there was no future in going forward.

  “And what about them?” Stevie growled. “What are—”

  “There!” Morsten cut in, pointing towards the sunset. “You see! I told you they were lying. I told you there were flights. There’s a plane!”

  Dodson turned around. So did Pete and Corrie, though Bramley kept her eyes forward, and her hand close to the trigger.

  “That’s the flying padre,” Dodson said. “He shouldn’t be coming here.”

  “Look at the wings,” Corrie said. “Is that normal?”

  The plane wobbled and dipped, rising, then falling as it neared the runway.

  “It’s going to crash,” Pete whispered. The words were echoed behind him. Dodson began running. Without thinking, Pete ran after him. When he spared a glance back at the mob by the road, he saw they were waiting. Not leaving, not yet, but nor were they following. Pete slowed when he reached the runway, his eyes on the single-engine plane as it bucked, twisted forty degrees, and he was sure it was going to crash, but somehow it levelled off within a metre of the runway. It hit, rather than landed, skimming back into the air before bouncing down again. The engine cut out. The plane kept moving, skidding, turning, leaving the runway, casting a plume of dirt as it came to a final rest.

  When Pete had slowed, Dodson hadn’t. He’d seemed to know where the plane would stop and was sprinting into the dust cloud kicked up during the near crash. From the office, the hangars, and further down the runway, people ran toward the plane. Coughing and gagging on the settling dust, Pete reached the aircraft before them, but after the doctor.

  Dodson had thrown open the door. Five people had crammed themselves into the small plane, and all had been thrown about during the near-crash landing. All were covered in bloody bandages. Pete stepped back as the nearest prone figure moaned, but then she swore.

  “What happened?” Dodson asked.

  “We were overrun,” the pilot said, unstrapping his harness.

  “Zombies?” Pete asked.

  “People,” the pilot said. “Shot us up pretty bad, and that was before we took off.”

  “We’ve got multiple bullet wounds. Blood loss. These two are unconscious,” Dodson said. “Can you walk, mate? Out you get.”

  A nurse, Lisa Glebe, reached the plane, a medical kit in her hands. Liu was a few steps behind with a stretcher in hers.

  “Where’s the ambulance?” Dodson asked.

  “At the hospital,” Nurse Glebe said.

  “Both of them?” Dodson asked. “They’re meant to be here. Never mind. Get this woman into the operating theatre. Stop the bleeding. Liu, find me a truck, anything with a flatbed or tray. Try by the entrance, there’s plenty of vehicles there, and then tell the rest of that mob to shift themselves. We’ve a real emergency. They can help or leave, but they can’t stay.”

  Pete found himself on one end of the stretcher, Nurse Glebe on the other, a woman with a bandage on her arm and shoulder lying between them.

  “What’s happening at the road?” Nurse Glebe asked as they ran the patient back to the office.

  “People want to catch a plane,” Pete said.

  They carried the stretcher up the shallow steps, inside, and down the hallway to a room that had been scrubbed spotless. Three examination beds had been set up. Between them were lights and drips, with trays of medical instruments on the plastic-covered counter at the rear.

  “Were we expecting this?” Pete asked.

  “Not this, and not yet,” Glebe said. “Help me get her onto the bed. What’s your name, ma’am?”

  “Rita,” the injured woman said through gritted teeth.

  “There,” Glebe said. “Looks like you’ve lost a lot of blood. I’m going to stop the bleeding, and then we’ll take you to the hospital. It’s all quite common, nothing to worry about, but I’ve got to remove these soiled bandages. It’s going to hurt a bit, but that’ll be the worst of it over. Were these bandages applied in the plane? Pete, those scissors from the tray behind you, but gloves first.”

  “Gloves, right.” He handed her the box. She
pulled on a pair. “You put a pair on, too,” she added. “Then the scissors. What happened to you, Rita?” she added, turning back to the patient.

  “The cattle station was overrun,” she said through gritted teeth. “We tried to fight. Everyone started shooting.”

  Pete struggled with the gloves; donning them was far more difficult than the TV shows made out. He handed the nurse the scissors.

  “It feels worse than it is,” Glebe said, cutting at the dark-stained bandages. “And you’ve come to the right place. We’re turning the airfield into a clearing station for injured from the frontline. Always wondered where the frontline was going to be, but I guess it was wherever you’ve come from. Where was that?”

  There was the muted report of a gunshot from outside.

  “It’s those idiots by the front gate,” Pete said.

  “Go and see what’s going on,” Glebe said. “If we can’t get her to the hospital, I need to know.”

  “Got it.” Pete left the room, heading through the building to the exit facing the town. He opened the door in time to see the trucks and cars skidding a turn as they drove away.

  “A shot over their heads, and that was all it took,” he said. He breathed the evening air. One crisis had solved another, and as soon as the patient was taken to the hospital, this one would be over, too. He went back inside to tell the nurse.

  A scream echoed around the building, abruptly cut short. He sprinted back to the impromptu operating theatre, expecting to see Rita had died, but she was sitting upright, her face slick with blood. The nurse had collapsed to the floor.

  Blood dribbled from Rita’s slack mouth as she fell from the examination couch. Instinctively, Pete took a step towards her, until she threw her arm out, clawing and grabbing towards his leg. He backed away, banging into the door, accidentally knocking it closed. He tried to scream, tried to yell, but all that came out was the single word, “zombie.”

  He reached for the door handle, but the zombie lurched forwards, and he had to step back, and away from the door. He grabbed a drip-stand and hurled it at the blood-coated woman. The snarling monstrosity batted it out of the way. Her hand tangled in the slender tube so when she launched another clawing swing, the stand moved with her, rattling on two wheels before tumbling sideways to the floor. With another grasping jerk, Rita tore her hand free.

  Pete ducked around the nearest bed, and now it and the zombie were between him and the room’s only door. He shoved the bed towards the undead woman. It was heavier than he’d realised and barely moved. In a desperate search for weapons or an escape, he saw the tray of medical implements and grabbed a scalpel. The zombie leaned over the bed, not quite trying to climb, not quite trying to push, it was almost as if she was trying to walk through it. Pete slashed the scalpel at her face, slicing a neat line through the flesh above her eyes. Red-brown pus oozed out, but Rita didn’t stop clawing and grasping, snapping her blood-blackened teeth as she pushed the bed, inch by inch, towards him.

  He backed up a pace, and now he was against the counter. The zombie came on. In another few seconds, Pete would be trapped. He screamed. The zombie didn’t. He looked around again, and grabbed the only thing he could reach: the monitor for a portable EKG machine. It was smaller than a microwave but heavier; he swung it at Rita’s head. The first blow broke teeth, but didn’t stop the mouth from snapping. The second blow cracked bone. She dropped onto the bed. He raised the monitor above his head, smashing it down on the twitching zombie’s skull, spraying red-brown pus over the bed and himself. He dropped the monitor.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, the words hollow to his ears.

  A hand curled around his foot. He looked down and saw Nurse Glebe. A ragged gash on her neck pulsed viscous pus as her head bucked. The gnashing teeth bit air, inching closer to his leg with each snap. He dragged his foot back, kicked at her hand, and clambered up onto the plastic-covered counter, scattering medical implements across the floor. The undead nurse’s hand curled around the edge of the bed. It tugged, pulling itself upright.

  “No!” Pete yelled.

  A shot rang out, the nurse collapsed, a bullet hole in her head.

  Doctor Dodson stood by the now open door, a small pistol in his hand.

  “Both dead?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m sorry.”

  “And you? Were you bitten?”

  “No. I don’t think so. No, I wasn’t.”

  Dodson lowered his gun. “Two of the others on the plane were infected. Turned. Killed the pilot. The other is being watched.”

  “Oh. The woman, she said they were overrun. I guess that’s what she meant. I thought it was people like Morsten. Looters, not the undead.”

  “That’s what they said,” Dodson said. “People, not zombies. They lied.”

  “Why?”

  “They thought they were special,” Dodson said. “Thought they were immune. No one is special, Pete. No one.”

  The water ran slow and tepid, rinsing blood and gore from his skin and hair. He rubbed, wanting to scrub and scratch with his fingernails, but didn’t dare risk even that smallest of cathartic pleasures.

  Damp, but not clean, wearing scrubs once more, he sat on the low bench in the four-person changing room, his head in his hands.

  “I’ve been sent to see if you were bitten,” Corrie said, opening the door, a rifle in her hands.

  “I wasn’t,” he said.

  “I believe you. How are you doing?”

  “I’m alive,” he said. “And I guess that’s all I can hope for. Now, promise me you won’t ask me that question for at least another year.”

  “Promise,” she said, and sat down next to him.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “That’s the wrong question,” Corrie said.

  “What’s the right one?”

  “Where did they come from,” she said. “And it’s a question we don’t have an exact answer to. The last of them turned about five minutes ago.”

  “Oh. What do we know?”

  “Not much. They were on a cattle station around fifty kilometres away, and they were overrun with the undead. It’s the flying padre’s plane, but he wasn’t aboard. We know he, like the flying doctors, was visiting remote settlements to see who was where, and to bring back people who didn’t need to be there. How they were overrun is a mystery, but from the mix of bullet wounds and bites, they only narrowly escaped.”

  “We don’t know how many were left behind?” Pete asked.

  “It’s difficult. The government’s shut down the mobile phone network. A few of the stations, settlements, and homesteads have radios, but that’s an open channel. You can’t ask the world whether they’ve seen any zombies. I mean, you could, but it would just bring more chaos. Captain Hawker’s on his way back from town. He’ll take a helicopter up, see if they can find this place, but we don’t have much to go on.”

  “And night is on its way,” Pete said. “Not that it matters. Not after this morning. There were zombies a couple of miles outside of town. There will be more.”

  “Yes. I suppose so. I guess the only ray of hope is that all of these people, originally, had to have been infected because of that plane so, maybe, this group will be the last.”

  “Some hope.”

  “Yeah. Here.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the pistol. “I’ve got a rifle now. I think you could use it.”

  He took it uncertainly.

  “It’s not loaded,” she said. She handed him the magazine, then the suppressor. “And here’s a couple of spare magazines. Inspector Qwong found them for me. I didn’t ask from where. I think we’re okay with her.”

  “Okay about what?”

  “The pilots, the hitman, Kempton, all of that,” Corrie said.

  “I’d forgotten that was today. Or is it yesterday? Whichever. She’s going to forget it?”

  “I doubt she’ll forget,” Corrie said, “but the slate’s been put aside, if not entirely wiped clean. She got a message th
is afternoon. Most prisoners have been released. Sort of. It sounds like they’re doing hard labour instead of hard time, but everyone has to work now, so what’s the difference between a convict and a conscript? No one is interested in cartels anymore.”

  “I have some questions myself,” Pete said. “But they can wait. What happened to Morsten?”

  “Drove away as soon as the people from that plane turned. Hopefully she kept driving.”

  “Well that’s that, then. Is the cargo plane still expected?”

  “In a few hours.”

  “Then we better find Inspector Qwong. Did you say she was here on the airfield?”

  “Why do you want to see her?”

  “To get some body bags for all those zombies,” Pete said.

  Chapter 21 - The Road to Menindee

  Menindee Road, New South Wales

  24th February

  “I know why you don’t want me to go up in the plane,” Liu said to her son. “You always hated it when your dad was away. Now he’s on the other side of the world, and your sister is stuck at the top of it. But that’s not the fault of the plane. It’s because your dad and I made the wrong choices in life. You can be angry at that, or at me, but it won’t change that we did what we thought was best at the time. But why don’t you come up in the air with me? I’ll teach you how to fly. Your dad taught me, and it’s not nearly as complicated as it looks. Bet you’ll have learned it all in a few hours.”

  There was silence behind the locked bathroom door. Finally, there was a click, and Bobby came out. “You’ll show me how to fly?”

  “Better than that, I’ll let you do some of the flying. Deal?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Bobby said. He followed his mother outside. Liu gave Pete and Corrie a wan smile.

  “Crisis averted,” Corrie said, putting the screwdriver down on the nearest shelf. “Guess we don’t need that. We should get to the railway, see if we’re needed there.”

  They certainly weren’t needed at the airport. News of the zombies on the flying padre’s plane had made its way up the chain of command. When the cargo flight of ammunition had arrived, so had a hundred soldiers. Pete had hardly been needed for the unloading, and Corrie had been quickly disarmed and replaced as a sentry on the main road. The other soldiers had been deployed to the town. With no gunfire or alarms to break the silence, Pete assumed that the night had been spent peacefully. Certainly, when he’d woken, the only cause for concern was Bobby having locked himself in the bathroom.