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

by Tayell, Frank

  “Anna’s not leaving until tomorrow,” Tess said. “So you’ll have time to visit after you report in. There’s supposed to be a broadcasted session of parliament tonight where some state representatives and politicians returning from Hobart will be sworn in as a new parliament. They’ll give a speech blaming Sir Malcolm Baker, Erin Vaughn, and Ian Lignatiev for the coup, and acknowledge Oswald Owen as prime minister. You don’t need to be there for that. Anna will probably be away for a week, but when she gets back, things should be returning to normal.”

  “Things are okay in Tasmania, then?” Clyde asked.

  “Your husband’s there, yes?” Tess asked.

  “And my son,” Clyde said.

  “I’ve heard no bad things,” Tess said.

  “Clyde could go there, couldn’t he?” Zach asked. “I mean, we just saved the world, didn’t we? He deserves a reward. Fair’s fair, right?”

  “That’s not how the army works,” Clyde said. “Or the police. Or a society. We’ve got to help those nearby, and hope those near our dearest do the same.”

  Tess held out the pen. “Write a letter, Clyde. I’ll ask Mick to make sure it’s on the next plane heading south. Maybe in a day or two, we can fly you down to pick them up. But first, we’ve got to close the chapter on the coup.”

  “And find Sir Malcolm Baker, right?” Elaina asked.

  “In a perfect world, yes,” Tess said. “Baker is our only lead. We know he was backing the coup in a bid to get his son-in-law, Aaron Bryce, into the number-one job. A month ago, we’d identify every property Baker owned, and send a strike-team to each, followed by analysts to comb through every digital file and scrap of paper, locate every contact, and lean on them until the truth popped loose. That’s not an option now.”

  “But this inconvenience cuts both ways,” Toppley said. “He’ll have just as much difficulty putting together a second attack, or even an escape.”

  “Exactly,” Tess said. “He’s probably in some shack in the bush, dreading his Ned Kelly moment. We’ve got a week to ensure he’s not an active threat. Our best bet is to dig up a generator, find a hacker, and see if any tax records can be recovered here in Canberra. We’ll find his registered businesses, and start there. We won’t find him, but maybe the address of the shack is cached in a computer.”

  “His charity was on the waterfront in Brisbane,” Clyde said. “Massive place. Huge ballroom. Beautiful views from the sky-terrace. If the press were attending, particularly the rival press, he’d rent the space to genuine charities on condition he got a positive mention or twelve.”

  “What kind of charity did he run?” Elaina asked.

  “Mono-directional vertical income redistribution,” Clyde said. “It was a tax dodge. Just like his warehouse. I forget the name of the suburb. Place to the east of the city.”

  “Crestmead,” Elaina said. “He was going to open a factory to make slot machines. Got the land for a song, and then had the pokies made overseas and just used the warehouse for storage. It was supposed to be a hundred jobs, but ended up being ten. I’d an aunt who used to make the push-plates and frames. Baker bought them out and shut them down.”

  “A warehouse doesn’t sound a likely place for a millionaire’s bunker,” Tess said. “And the old waterfront is now a swamp.”

  “I might know where he could be,” Bianca said. “It’d be somewhere remote, but not too remote, right? Away from desperate refugees, but close enough to an airport he could reach it if he had to fly in. Do you remember Denis Bergoff?”

  “The spin-bowler?” Clyde said. “Made a fortune in sponsorship, and even more in match fixing.”

  “When he was caught, he had to sell his house,” Bianca said. “It’s a mansion west of Brissie. A compound, really. It has a wall and its own aquifer, and is surrounded by grazing land. Three swimming pools, two of which are outside, and a kitchen worthy of a hotel, but it’s not a very big house. Only twelve bedrooms.”

  “Only?” Elaina said. “How did he manage?”

  “Inside, there’s this long hall he used for indoor cricket, and for balls,” Bianca said.

  “You mean bowling?” Zach asked.

  “Yes, but also for dancing,” Bianca said. “Every year, Bergoff held a party in the city on December first. One thousand would be invited. From them, two hundred would be selected for a special New Year’s Eve event in his mansion.”

  “Oh, and you did the catering?” Zach asked.

  “Something like that,” Bianca said. “Looking back at the extravagance, and the arrogance of a function with a selection process, it’s no surprise he was involved in some nefarious activity.”

  “Bloke was always batting above his ability,” Clyde said.

  “What’s the link with Baker?” Tess asked.

  “Sir Malcolm was never invited to the parties,” Bianca said. “It was the most exclusive event of the year and he was deliberately snubbed. So when Bergoff was arrested and the house was put up for auction, Baker bought it.”

  “It’s close to Brisbane?” Tess asked.

  “About an hour’s limo-ride from the airport,” Bianca said. “I’ve got the address on my phone.”

  “They sent a limo for the caterers?” Zach asked.

  “Did they have security?” Tess asked.

  “Bergoff did,” Bianca said. “I don’t know about Sir Malcolm. I only met him twice. On both occasions, I kept my distance. Everyone knows the stories about him, right?”

  “I don’t,” Zach said. “What stories?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Clyde said.

  “A security team would have the contact details for the other teams in other properties,” Tess said. “Maybe including the outback rock he’s slithered under. Bianca, find a map that shows us where this place is. Sophia, Dan, you better report to Anna. Clyde, gear everyone else up. We’ll assume they have security, so I want everyone in body-armour. I’ll offer a pardon to any guard who’ll talk. But after the flooding, Brisbane’s on the brink. We’re as likely to find armed refugees there as rent-a-cops. I’ll see if Mick can find us a plane.”

  Chapter 2 - No Ball Games in the Garage

  Mount Forbes, Queensland, Australia

  “Of course Dr Dodson’s flying,” Clyde said, as their plane soared skyward. “That bloke’s done so many road-landings, if you put him in an ambulance, he’d try to take off.”

  Which was, more or less, what Mick had said when Tess had asked for a pilot and a plane. Mick had also told them that Brisbane Airport was underwater. So was Jacob’s Well. An A380 had failed to land in Archerfield and had left a crater where the runway had been. A helicopter-based rescue of those stranded in the city was being run out of Caboulture, but she couldn’t pinpoint that with a compass, let alone on a map. She’d bowed to the inevitable, and stopped arguing with the stubborn old pilot.

  Bianca was in the co-pilot’s seat, ready to play spotter when they came within range. According to the address Bianca had dug out of her phone, their destination was Hedricks Road, which wasn’t on their map. The second line of the address, Mount Forbes, was. The mansion was eighty kilometres west of Brisbane’s coastal airport, and thirty kilometres southwest of the satellite-city of Ipswich, which put it well within range of the millions of flooded-out refugees.

  The Beechcraft was a civilian aircraft rather than one modified for the military or for outback service, but she assumed it had similar specifications to the planes in Broken Hill upon which Mick had lavished his attention. It was an eleven-hundred-kilometre flight. At a speed of five hundred and seventy kilometres per hour, they’d be above their target in two hours. They’d have half an hour to find the place from above, and another half hour to find somewhere to land, unless they wanted to refuel locally.

  She’d allocated, and prepared for, up to twenty-four hours to search the crook’s mansion. But if they found a security guard willing to trade information for a pardon, they could be back in Canberra for the start of Oswald Owen’s political showdow
n. She didn’t need to be there for that; Bruce Hawker’s soldiers would stop a coup. No one could stop a vote being called and O.O. being dethroned. But that was democracy, and what they were sweating to defend.

  She turned her gaze to the window. She loved Australia from the air. Except for the giant mines, occasionally larger cities, and black-thread roads connecting each, it had barely been touched in two centuries of immigration. Mick completely, and vocally, disagreed, but that debate had kept them distracted on their way to many remote accidents and too many return flights to the morgue. Now, it was truly changing. Fast.

  Grey plumes rose from the pastureland surrounding a sprawling farm. A controlled burn of undead corpses? Perhaps, but this was bushfire season. Puffs of cooking smoke rose from a fortified town outside of which sat a long column of stationary vehicles. Beyond the town, dust trails marked vehicles speeding north. Could it be Goulburn? Probably not, though that name had stuck in her brain from the route Mick had picked. Follow the main roads to the coast, and follow the coast north, that was how they’d find Brisbane. From there, turn west, overfly Ipswich, and then do a handbrake turn to find the mansion.

  Whether or not that town was Goulburn, there were ghouls beneath the plane now. A slow-moving column, at least a hundred strong, lumbered between two low, grassy hills. Gravity kept them to the lowland, and so kept them together. One hundred wasn’t so many if they attacked a settlement guarded by rifle-carrying soldiers. If the defenders were civilian-refugees armed only with tools, it would be a massacre.

  She pulled the shade down, closed her eyes, and tried to banish the thought with sleep.

  She was roused from an inadequately shallow slumber by Bianca’s voice over the cabin-address system. “We’ve arrived. Our destination can be viewed on the left— sorry, the port side.”

  “Can’t miss it,” Mick added.

  “Did I sleep through Brisbane?” Tess asked, raising her blind.

  “And the refugee camps,” Toppley said. “I’d say Brisbane jumped into a ute and moved in with Ipswich. The camps are extensive, but fortified.”

  Below, now, lay grassland, occasionally sloping, occasionally sunken, and just as occasionally broken by a neatly ploughed rectangle. It was mostly grazing land, though she could see no livestock. A smattering of tracks led between a sprinkling of farmhouses, but the mansion stood out, ringed by a near-gleaming white wall. Inside, straight lines and ninety-degree angles marked the alternating raised and sunken lawns, now turned brown. The late summer heat had boiled the swimming pools green, but the house glistened white, like the outer wall.

  Two storeys high, with a balcony at the rear, and a large driveway in the east leading to a solid gate. In the north was an extended rooftop terrace, while the southern side was dotted with solar panels. It was an odd feature for a house of Sir Malcolm’s, whose newspapers devoted more ink to astrology than climate science. Odd unless you were worried about a failure of the grid. Behind the house, and running to the compound’s rear wall, was a garage almost the length of a hangar, covered in wilting brown grass. Behind that, a jet-black road sliced through the pastureland, about ten kilometres in length.

  “I’m going to set us down on that road,” Mick announced. “I’ll give her one low pass to check for obstacles, a sharp turn, then a quick landing, so buckle-up and hold onto your lunch.”

  “What was the name of that mining company who were running the outback opal mine?” Toppley asked.

  “Harris Global,” Tess said. “I just had the same thought. It looks like a runway, doesn’t it?”

  “There are bodies by the house,” Clyde said. “Near the rear. By the garage.”

  “It looks more like a plane hangar,” Toppley said.

  It was a disconcertingly smooth and quiet landing, which spoke of how much money had gone into the surface. A fact confirmed by a visual inspection when Tess followed Clyde out of the plane. The roadside trees had been removed, and the pasture on either side had no drainage ditch.

  “Clear,” Clyde said, letting his rifle drop to the low-ready with the barrel aimed at the road. “No movement from the compound.”

  “No smoke, either,” Elaina said, as the rest of the team climbed out of the plane. “But I saw solar panels, so maybe that’s why.”

  “This surface isn’t wide enough for a runway,” Mick said. “It’s just a road. But a good one. Too good for out here. A heavy tractor would churn it to shreds.”

  “So why build it?” Zach asked.

  Clyde whistled, and pointed away from the compound, across the gently rising pasture to where a figure lumbered out of the shadows of a slumping tuckeroo tree.

  “Zom,” Zach said.

  “Hold fire,” Clyde said, raising his rifle, a suppressed HK416 which had originally belonged to the RSAS, but which Bruce Hawker had given Tess in Broken Hill. She’d given it to Clyde, as he’d proved himself the best shot in their team, and swapped it for a shotgun, but hoped she’d need nothing more than the Taser counterbalancing the pistol on her other hip. Everyone else was similarly armed with what they’d scrounged, largely from the mercenaries who’d attempted the coup.

  The bullet whispered from the suppressed assault rifle. The shape tumbled into the wilted grass, and Tess stepped away from the plane. “Mick, how long would you need to take off?”

  “Less time than it’ll take for you lot to climb aboard,” he said.

  “Fine. Wait here with Zach and Elaina. I’ll take Clyde, Teegan, and Bianca, and be back in twenty.”

  “Not on your life,” Mick said. “Not on my life. Rule-one from every horror movie ever made: the pilot dies first. Besides, since I can’t leave without you, there’s no point me kicking my heels here.”

  Tess knew him too well to argue. “Clyde, take point. Bianca, you’re with Clyde. I’ve got the rear.”

  “Stick to the road. Watch the long grass,” Clyde said. “Listen for noise. A lot of noise. Zoms aren’t going to sneak up on us.”

  “Not the best spot,” Mick said, falling into step next to Tess. “No, it’s not where I’d build an apocalyptic retreat. It’s too close to Ipswich.”

  “About thirty kilometres, isn’t it?” Tess asked, scanning the grassland.

  “Thereabouts. Couldn’t tell you how far to the coast because I’m not sure where that is now. Picked up a bit of radio chatter before we turned west. Very officious.”

  “From the refugee camps?” Tess asked.

  “I was told to keep the airspace clear,” Mick said.

  “You should have told them who you were.”

  “I did. They were unmoved, which shows things are getting back to normal. It sounded organised. Or getting that way. Local government, local governance, that’s the answer, not top down from Canberra.”

  “Oh, so you agree with O.O.?” Tess said. “That’s what he wants, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t you dare tell him I approve,” Mick said.

  “No power lines near the road,” Tess said, “but there is a transmission line over there, leading to the compound. Wonder if they’ve got a back-up generator, too.”

  “A sheep station in Western Australia,” Mick said. “Somewhere in the north. The sheep would be a walking pantry.”

  “What are you talking about?” Tess asked.

  “Where I’d pick if I’d known this was all going to happen.”

  “Nah, you’d have stayed in Broken Hill.”

  “Could be, but I wouldn’t have come to a place like this.”

  A short strip of tarmac led from the road to the compound, widening as it drew near the white-clad walls. The hangar-garage doors were three metres tall, and thirty long, painted white rather than clad in the odd panelling coating the walls. To the right was a pedestrian door, and outside it, and the garage, was an open graveyard.

  Clyde whistled, raising his rifle, but aiming the barrel low, into the high grass. “Crawler,” he said, and fired. “Hold. Clear.”

  “They’re all dead, but are they undead?�
� Tess said, picking a path through the bodies, noting the discarded bullet casings. A body-armoured corpse didn’t have a head wound. He didn’t have any legs, either. They’d been torn off, leaving ragged lumps of flesh behind and one booted foot a metre away. A second guard lay two metres closer to the wall, but he’d been shot in the face. Even before his corpse began to bloat in the late summer heat, he’d been bursting out of his body-armour.

  “MP5 submachine gun,” Clyde said, pointing his barrel at the corpse’s still-strapped weapon. “Not a common weapon in the ADF except with Special Forces, and that bloke’s one burger short of a coronary.”

  “No one looted the gun,” Toppley said, gingerly pulling a magazine from the corpse’s vest-pouch. “Or the ammunition. This magazine is fully loaded.”

  The bodies lay thickest next to the pedestrian door, with a third body-armoured corpse lying in the doorway itself, and atop a foundry of spent brass.

  “It was a rear-guard action,” Clyde said. “They were overrun as they fell back.”

  “Those garage doors are wide enough for a small plane,” Mick said. “Tall enough, too. But I swear that road’s wrong for a runway.”

  “This wasn’t clad white when I came here,” Bianca said, her voice shaking as she looked up, away from the litter of bodies. Zach was equally pale, while Elaina was turning green.

  “What did it look like before?” Tess asked, stepping closer to the door.

  “Grey stone, I think,” Bianca said. “It wasn’t white.”

  “This is plastic,” Tess said, eyeing the hole in the facade made by a stray round. “About a centimetre thick. Weird thing to stick on your home. No lights inside. Flashlights on.”

  “I don’t have one,” Elaina said.

  “It’s attached to your rifle,” Clyde said.

  Tess slung her shotgun, drew her sidearm, slotted in her own tactical light, and switched it on. “Me and Clyde first. Everyone else, wait for the word.”