Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation]

by Tayell, Frank

  “Do you know what’s going wrong with the electricity?” Tess asked, keeping her voice low. “The lights are on, but the fans aren’t.”

  “There’s been a power cut,” Leo said. “The generators have kicked in, but the lights are on a different circuit to the air-con. The lights come on to aid an evacuation of the building. The fans don’t, in case the reason for a power cut is a fire.”

  “A power cut? And you don’t know why the electricity’s down?” she asked. “Could it be an EMP?”

  He tapped his lethally loaded tool-belt. “I’m on my way to find out.”

  “Don’t leave the building,” she said, and hurried outside.

  Zach, the teenage conscript she’d drafted as her driver, snapped to a rigid attempt at attention, giving her an equally rigid salute so as not to be shown up by the second pair of RSAS soldiers standing guard by Anna’s car. But those two soldiers weren’t looking at him, or at Tess. Both had their hands close to their triggers, while their eyes scanned opposite halves of the horizon.

  “Zach, try the radio,” Tess said, opening the passenger door. “Quick.”

  “What’s wrong, boss?” he asked.

  “Just turn on the radio,” she said, looking up at the streetlights, the neighbouring buildings, and the square of grass where the agricultural academics oversaw the conscripts who were converting lawns to fields.

  An up-tempo song about love and betrayal warbled from the speakers.

  Tess sighed. “Back in the car, Zach, and back to the airport.” She raised her voice, pitching it to the two soldiers. “The radio station is still transmitting!”

  One gave a nod, but neither relaxed.

  Aided by exhaustion, Tess’s fears swirled together as Zach sped the car, far too fast, through the growing barricades of the increasingly militarised city.

  “Slow down, Zach, this isn’t a street race!” she said, as he overshot a handbrake turn. “You do have a licence, right?”

  “No worries, Commish,” he said, which wasn’t an answer to anything.

  A week ago, Zach had been another civilian conscript, allocated to help clear Canberra’s suburbs. He’d lied about his name, and she was increasingly convinced he’d lied about his age, too, assuming anyone had bothered to ask. In body-armour and camouflage he looked more like a kid playing dress-up than a soldier in training. But he’d proven himself loyal during the attempted coup, and that was worth a few frayed nerves as he zigzagged across the lanes.

  Theirs was the only car on the road, not counting the vehicles co-opted into the junction-barricades of the city’s new internal defences. As they approached the airport, a 747 overtook them overhead.

  “Don’t you dare try to race the plane!” she said as Zach’s hand dropped to the gears.

  “Wasn’t even thinking of it, boss,” he said, reluctantly slowing instead.

  The gates to the international airport were open, but guarded. The sentries waved them through.

  “Mick’s by that twin-prop,” Tess said. “Drive me there.”

  Mick Dodson was the most experienced pilot and medic in the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and stood a chance of holding the title for the whole of Australia. He was also Anna’s father, and, despite the age gap, one of Tess’s dearest friends. Appointed as Surgeon Emeritus of the flying doctors in the hope he’d take the hint and retire, Mick had instead taken it to mean he couldn’t be fired.

  Zach braked, and Tess jumped out, while Mick stepped away from the partially dismantled plane, wiping his oil-stained hands on an already oil-stained jumpsuit.

  “Speeding like that, you’re either trying to get away from trouble, or you’re trying to catch it,” Mick said.

  “The power’s out at the university,” Tess said.

  “Yep, a fire spread to a transformer up in Aranda,” Mick said. “The rest of the network wasn’t properly balanced to compensate. Rolling blackouts will be a nuisance for a day or two.”

  “How much of that is a guess, Mick?” Tess asked.

  “Less than half,” he said. “I stuck two private-jet pilots up in PC-12 to fly P.A.P. over the city. They spotted the smoke.”

  “What’s P.A.P.?” Zach asked.

  “Penance Air Patrol,” Mick said. “It’s like C.A.P., but without the combat. They thought they knew better than me how to run an airport.”

  Tess looked skyward. “They’re radioing back what they see?” she asked.

  “Our eyes in the sky,” Mick said.

  Tess nodded, relaxing, but only for a heartbeat. “Mick, who’s going to put out the fire?”

  They stared at one another in silence.

  “I’ve still got the airport fire engines here,” Mick said. “A couple of the fire-crew, too.”

  “Zach, drive Mick to the fire engines,” Tess said. “Mick, you’re not to try putting the fire out yourself. Zach, you make sure he doesn’t. No arguments, Mick. Not today. Go on.”

  As Zach and Mick climbed back in the car, Tess turned to the now-landed 747. She didn’t recognise the logo on the plane’s tail, nor the uniform worn by the armed soldiers. Two were aboard the tug-truck approaching the front of the plane, while two more soldiers were aboard the set of mobile-stairs trundling towards the closed door near the tail.

  The power-cut wasn’t caused by a nuclear bomb. Not here. Not yet. The fire was just another in the increasingly long string of minor disasters that were occurring too frequently to be remembered, let alone be counted.

  The mobile-stairs stopped four metres from the cabin door. One soldier ran to the top, the other to the tarmac, but both aimed their weapons on the cabin door. Slowly, it opened. After a seemingly interminable pause, the guns were lowered, and the stairs reversed the last few metres. The exhausted passengers were finally allowed to disembark and make their way to the quarantine-hangar. Tess headed for the terminal.

  After the outbreak, an alliance of Pacific nations had emerged almost by accident. As much of the world was consumed by chaos, some local leaders packed ships with refugees as the simplest way to reduce potential infection. Those ships headed south, making landfall in Australia, New Zealand, or whichever Pacific island they had the fuel to reach. Most of the world’s behemothic cruise ships had already been taking advantage of the southern-hemisphere summer. Cargo freighters had been hauling minerals from Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines to the ever-hungry factories in the northern Pacific. Over ten thousand vessels, varying in size from large to gargantuan, with refugees crammed ten to a cabin, twenty to a corridor, with hundreds more on deck. Ports had a limited number of piers, and Australia had a limited capacity for refugees. As soon as the vessels arrived, they were refuelled and re-filled, this time with tourist-soldiers, A.D.F. retirees, refugee-recruits, and unlucky conscripts. Armed with rumours the Americans and Japanese would supply weapons at the northern fronts, the ships were sent back to sea.

  Then came the nuclear exchange. But most of the missiles in the first wave were detonated in the ocean. In turn, this triggered a tsunami. Ships caught in the EMP were left dead in the water. Those in port were swamped by the sky-scraping waves. Military vessels had been gathered together into massive fleets centred around U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Those had been destroyed in the second wave of nuclear missiles, fired by the nuclear-armed submarines which had obeyed their last suicidal orders for mutually assured destruction.

  Though neither she, nor even Anna, knew the full extent of the damage, not all shipping would have been lost. Not all ports would have been submerged. Only a fraction of a percent of global sea capability now remained, but planes still arrived. Fewer than a week ago, and each with only a few hundred refugees aboard. Where the group aboard this 747 came from was a mystery. They traipsed towards quarantine in the repurposed hangar. After twenty-four hours, they would be transferred to a work detail in the city. But not the unaccompanied children.

  Tess followed the sound of a guitar to the now-dormant baggage-claim hall, where a terrifyingly sinist
er man was singing a song about a kangaroo-sled team.

  “And the ’roo bounced,” he sang. “And the sled bounced, and the driver went… Everyone?”

  “Flying!” about half of the children chorused.

  With a flourish, Dan Blaze strummed a finish. A young woman in a matronly pink cardigan stepped forward. “Thank you, Mr Blaze,” she said with pedagogical professionalism. “Line up, children. In pairs, please. We’ll take you to the boarding school where breakfast awaits. I think you’ll find the bus a smidge more comfortable than a sled pulled by kangaroos.”

  Blaze strummed a quick chord, gave a bow, and made his way over to Tess.

  When they’d first met, he’d been a convict ten minutes short of a long drop. Withdrawn. Watchful. Wary. The very definition of bad news walking. But in reality, he was a Canadian children’s entertainer, universally recognised across the English-singing world, at least among his core audience of under-tens and their parents. Blaze had found himself playing nurse aboard a medical mercy-flight from Vancouver, and then miscategorised as a convict in Darwin. Tess had saved him from a last dance, and he’d saved her, and helped save Anna and civilisation, during the attempted coup.

  “G’day, Dan,” she said. “Where are the kids from?”

  “Lombok,” he said. “Should have landed in Darwin, but the runway was full. They were redirected here. Arrived in the middle of the night. Came in on the plane before that one,” he added, gesturing outside. “That’s two planes since midnight.”

  “What happened to their parents?” she asked.

  “They knew this could be the last plane out,” Blaze said. “They stayed behind so more kids could board.”

  She nodded. “Who’s the teacher?”

  “She said she’d been sent by Ms Nguyen,” Blaze said. “They’re going to a refugee camp at a race course we’re now calling a school. We’re storing up problems for later.”

  “For at least a generation,” Tess said. “So let’s hope we have many future years in which to regret what we did today. Where’s Sophia?”

  “In the main quarantine centre keeping watch with the soldiers,” he said, tapping his holster. “I said I’d go help after these kids were collected.”

  “Leave that to the soldiers,” Tess said. “I’ve a job for you both. Grab Sophia, and meet me up in the lounge.”

  She paused a moment to watch the last of the refugee children heading away. Civilisation had fallen, but they might just have caught enough pieces to patch it back together.

  In the early days of the outbreak, while she was still in Broken Hill, most of Canberra’s police officers, along with the military units including Parliament’s ceremonial ADF guards, had been dispatched to the outback and the coast, to deal with rising numbers of the undead. Yes, in part they had been sent where calm minds, steady hands, and familiarity with a firearm could assist the most. But their deployment was also a deliberate policy of Erin Vaughn and Ian Lignatiev’s to remove loyal obstacles before their attempted coup.

  Now, with few personnel, a patchy electricity supply, and with the data-centres powered down, there was little purpose in operating out of the AFP headquarters. Even so, she’d rather the sign on the first-class lounge read something more professional than Team Stonefish. But that was the name Zach had picked for their original crew of conscripts, and it had stuck.

  She opened the door, and entered an armourer’s workshop.

  “G’day, Commish,” Elaina Slater said. “Is there more trouble?”

  “No more than usual,” Tess said. “Where did these rifles come from?”

  “They were aboard the plane which came in from Lombok with all those kids,” Clyde Brook said. “Should have been left with the defenders, but must have been overlooked. Twelve crates of AKMs dragged out of storage.”

  “Stored in a sandy pit below ground,” Teegan Toppley added. “It’s a disgrace keeping weapons like this.”

  “We’re triaging them,” Clyde said. “Stripping and rebuilding, but we’ll leave the cleaning to whomever is issued with them. Reckon we can salvage seventy percent.”

  “I thought I told you lot to get some sleep,” Tess said.

  “Day-time sleep is notoriously bad for one’s mental well-being,” Bianca Clague said.

  Bianca claimed to be a pastry chef from Adelaide, but her accent and jewellery, worn in addition to her new uniform, said she’d been more likely to own the patisserie than work there. In her late forties, she still wore a wedding ring, though she never spoke of her husband.

  Clyde Brook did speak of his husband, and his son, but never his more distant past. From his easy familiarity with a rifle, he’d spent it in uniform. Tess guessed he’d been Special Forces, but Clyde would only ever say he was now a charity worker.

  Teegan Toppley’s own reinvention put those two to shame. The one genuine convict in their group, her sentence for tax evasion was part of a complex plea-deal where she’d been allowed to return to Australia for cancer treatment. The press report during her trial described her as being a forty-six-year-old jewel-thief, but the police report listed her as a fifty-nine-year-old arms-dealer. That report had been sealed, and the deal agreed, because it also contained details of best-forgotten negotiations on behalf of the Australian government with groups diplomatically described as rebels.

  Elaina Slater, by contrast, wasn’t trying to be anyone other than herself: a twenty-five-year-old primary-school-teacher from Wagga Wagga whose gaze was alternating between a firing pin and the rifle which was otherwise reassembled.

  Add in Zach, Dan Blaze, and Sophia Peresta, the former yoga teacher, who’d taken a bullet to the arm during the coup, and only one word could adequately describe her team: conscripts.

  But they were loyal. Not just to Tess and the government in which Anna was now deputy prime minister, but to the notion of restoring a civilisation built on democracy, justice, and equality. Another descriptor could be given to them, and to her, and Anna, Mick, and even Oswald Owen: stubbornly over-optimistic.

  “Did any ammo get shipped with these guns?” Tess asked.

  “That’s in those crates by the bar,” Clyde said, gesturing to the corner of the room.

  “Ammunition is like alibis,” Toppley said. “One can never have enough.”

  “A dollar in the crim-jar,” Elaina said. “I think you mean that ammunition is like evidence. D’you know if any of the new factories are making more?”

  “I know they’re prioritising canning, so we don’t waste any food,” Tess said. “And I know they hoped the conscripts would be equipped by the U.S. when they were dumped ashore in Mexico, but those were Lignatiev and Vaughn’s plans.”

  “I’ll add ammo to the list,” Elaina said. “Clyde, happy Christmas.” She pushed the incorrectly assembled rifle towards him, and placed the pin on top, before taking out a notepad and pen.

  “What list?” Tess asked.

  “For Ms Nguyen,” Elaina said. “We’re writing down everything which might be forgotten, in case everyone else assumes someone is dealing with it.”

  “Add a city-wide fire-crew,” Tess said. “And finish up because I’ve got a job for us all.”

  The door opened, and Zach slouched in. “Wow. That’s a lot of guns.”

  “Which aren’t toys,” Elaina said, her tone reflexively switching to teacherly-stern.

  “Yeah, I know,” Zach said, just as reflexively subdued.

  “What did you do with Mick?” Tess asked.

  “He’s gone to quarantine to inspect the new arrivals,” Zach said. “They came from Mozambique. Perth sent them.”

  “Perth’s ferrying people here?” Elaina asked.

  Zach shrugged. “I guess.”

  “What about the fire?” Tess asked.

  “Oh, no worries. Mick sent the fire engine, and a couple of vans,” Zach said.

  “Doctor Dodson,” Elaina corrected, and Tess couldn’t help but smile.

  “What adventure did you have planned for us, Commis
sioner?” Toppley asked.

  “Ms Dodson has given me a week to wrap up the investigation into the coup,” Tess said. “After that, I’m playing escort for those Canadian scientists.”

  The door opened again. Sophia Peresta and Dan Blaze entered. Like the other conscripts, Sophia wore the requisitioned grey and black clothes-shop-camouflage they were calling a uniform. Unlike them, her arm was in a sling.

  “Any trouble in quarantine?” Tess asked.

  “Any zombies?” Zach added.

  “Not yet, and they’ve been on that plane for twenty hours already,” Sophia said.

  “From Mozambique?” Tess asked.

  “Flew into Perth, and barely landed,” Sophia said. “They weren’t allowed off the plane, but were refuelled, and sent here.”

  “Elaina, can I borrow that pen and notepad, thanks. Sophia, I’m allocating you as personal assistant to Anna Dodson. As long as she needs that wheelchair, there might be some very personal assistance for which I don’t think her SAS bodyguards were trained.”

  “Like what?” Zach asked, puzzled. “Clyde said the diggers train for everything.”

  “Dan, you’re on chair-pushing duty,” Tess added, raising her voice over Clyde’s snort of laughter. “Keep your rifle close, but your guitar closer. Over the next week, Anna’s doing a tour of the refugee camps. She’ll have soldiers for a bodyguard, but a bloke carrying a guitar will make her look less like a warlord. Everyone you meet will be desperate, hungry, and terrified. Singing a few songs to the kids might give people pause before they fling a brick.”

  “How long will we be away?” Sophia asked. “I only saw my daughter for five minutes this entire last week.”

  “She’s at the university?” Tess asked.

  “At the crèche,” Sophia said. “My husband’s digging fields there. So is my mother, unless they’ve dug graves for one another by now. I know Alice is being looked after, but it’s just not the same, not when I know she’s so close.”