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

by Tayell, Frank

  “In Madagascar,” Clyde said.

  “Yes,” Luis said. “And here, at sea, east of Tofo Beach, there were ships. Freighters under the protection of warships. Those were the refugee ships. They were waiting here, but the refugees were waiting in Maputo. The ships went south. It was not a noble deed,” he added, with weary admission. “If ships arrived in Maputo, the refugees would wait there for a ship rather than copying us and coming north, bringing the infected with them. Colhes o que semeias.”

  “Eventually, we all reap what we sow, mate,” Clyde said in partial translation and complete agreement. “Madagascar was a refuge for Mozambique and South Africa, too?”

  “So everyone thought,” Luis said. “But everyone in Tanzania, Kenya, and Somalia thought the same. Word spread over the radio, and must have been heard in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Namibia and even Niger, because planes arrived. The infected arrived. So did the pirates. Chinese. Americans. South Africans. Somali. Madagascan. Some wanted to steal food and fuel so they could remain at sea, aboard their ships. Others, the warships, they desired only to sink one another. It was madness. The large ships, the cruise ships and freighters which had carried the refugees, remained in Madagascar, in harbour, while the sea ran red with more blood than has been spilled in these waters for five hundred years. But os mortos had arrived by air.”

  “The zombies arrived here on planes?” Tess asked.

  “In Madagascar,” Luis said. “Earlier groups of refugees had moved inland. They were attacked. Infected. The island was lost from the inside. The refugees re-boarded the ships. Mortos were among them. The ships pulled anchor, and now they float at sea, ships of the dead, while the lost souls march on us from South Africa.”

  “Inhambane is in the northwest of the peninsula, yes?” Tess said. “Tofo Beach is thirty kilometres east, on the northeast of this peninsula. To the east of Tofo Beach is the sea, and a hundred kilometres of ocean filled with zombie-ships?”

  “Yes.”

  “To the west of Inhambane, there’s the river, and then another shore-facing town, that’s also been overrun?” Tess asked.

  “Maxixe, yes,” Luis said.

  “And to the south, there’s a few bridges separating us from all the zombies from the capital of Mozambique, and from South Africa?”

  “Oh no,” Luis said. “There is also a ford.”

  Chapter 7 - Warriors

  Rio Mutamba, Mozambique

  They left the city, and its smouldering cooking fires, behind, but the estuary-river kept them company as they followed the dusty road south. After a kilometre of burned and abandoned cars, licensed to five different countries, they reached an under-defended barricade. A military-green truck was parked next to a single-storey L-shaped home. On the roof of the truck’s cab stood a woman with a rifle, while a man stood on the flat roof of the house. Perhaps they were the property’s owners, perhaps they were looters, but they ignored the bus as it sped south.

  To the east lay barren summer-parched and mining-ruined scrub. Here, the horizon was broken with an occasional palm instead of an acacia; otherwise it was achingly similar to Broken Hill. Zombies had been right at home in the outback and the same would be true here.

  “Bridge ahead, Commish,” Clyde said.

  “No, not this bridge,” Luis said. “Keep going until the mines. You will see the mines. Then you will see the bridge.”

  The two-lane, hundred-metre-long, beam-bridge crossed a muddily sleeping estuarial bite the river had chewed from the peninsula. A tank was parked on the northern bank, with a self-propelled howitzer stopped at the bridge’s midpoint. Except the cannons were aimed north, not south. Their treads were snapped. They hadn’t been parked, they’d been abandoned.

  “What type are they? I think I recognise them,” Tess said.

  “From a history book,” Clyde said. “The tank’s a T-54.”

  “Soviet?” Tess asked.

  “Originally,” Clyde said. “The howitzer is a Gvodzika. That’s still in production but I didn’t think anyone south of Ethiopia operated them. From the direction of their guns, they broke down during a retreat.”

  The drivers were gone, and no one was now left to guard this bridge. Nor the next. But someone still fought on the peninsula. As the wind changed, from ahead, she caught the sound of gunfire.

  Scrub turned to scree, and then to slag as they drove south, and into terrain torn asunder by strip mining. Those machines had been re-purposed, driven onto the hundred-metre-long bridge. There, they had joined ancient tanks to become steel barricades at either end of the bridge, with a third barricade halfway along. The bridge ran nearly north to south. Below, the river had shrunk to a meandering twenty-metre-wide path, surrounded either side by a semi-lush, flood-plain forest. To the northwest, she could make out a patch of semi-cleared land that would have been farmed in any other year. But now, the people were gone, except from on the bridge itself. The sound of gunfire marked a last desperate defence against the undead.

  Even as they braked, a woman jumped from the giant crane which mostly blocked this end of the bridge, and ran towards them. She wore jeans, a sweat-stained shirt, and a blood stained hijab, and carried an old rifle with a very short magazine.

  “As-salamu alaykum,” she said. “You have guns? Proper guns?”

  “I guess we do,” Tess said. “How many do you need?”

  “All of them,” the woman said.

  Tess, Clyde, Hawker, and Oakes followed the woman back onto the bridge, leaving the scientists, Toppley, and Zach to continue loading magazines.

  Next to another stalled history-book tank was an achingly modern crane. Her closest friend, Liu Higson, had a husband whose job was to fly such machines between the mineral deposits of the world. From him, and those occasional investigations which led her to outback mines, she recognised it as being used to haul even larger pieces of mining equipment into place. But here, it reminded her of more recent stories of the Canadian army using earth-movers as tanks with which to crush the undead.

  With caterpillar treads as tall as her head, its height certainly offered safety from the undead for the people on top. Women. All bandaged, blood-stained, and battle-weary. That crane must be an impromptu aid-station. But their young guide was running too fast for Tess to ask questions. Too fast for her to keep up.

  She fell behind the men, angling across the roadway, slowing her pace, taking in the bridge, the bodies, the bullet casings, and the open grassland below.

  The undead must, previously, have reached the far end of the bridge, but been driven back. No, not driven. Because the undead would never retreat. They arrived in waves. One wave had been obliterated, but at the cost of tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Another wave was being held halfway along the bridge, at the second barricade, this one made of four bulldozers parked abreast. On top were more civilian-clad defenders. Eighteen, perhaps twenty. It was both their number, and their age. About half wore a hijab, none wore uniforms, while every single one of them was a woman.

  “Come. Up. Go. Fight,” their guide said, pausing at the ladder at the rear of the right-most caterpillar.

  “Oakes, take the left. Major, on the right,” Hawker said. “Commissioner, with me,” he added, crossing to the next bulldozer along.

  Hawker was already firing when she reached the top. Tess took one look at the bridge, and the irregular ranks of the hellish legion beyond. “Here,” she handed her carbine to their guide. “And take these.” She pulled out her magazines. “Hold the line, Colonel!”

  She jumped back down and ran, pushing through the pain from her hip, sprinting back to the bus.

  “Keep loading!” she yelled at Teegan and Zach as she put the bus into gear.

  “How bad is it?” Avalon asked.

  “Five hundred zombies,” Tess said. “More coming. About three minutes from over-running this bridge.” She drove, foot to the floor, around the crane. “They’re at the base of the dozers. About twenty women with rifles as old as those tank
s are just about holding them at bay.”

  The bus bounced over corpses. Metal shook. The bus juddered even after she’d braked, barely a metre from the rear of a bulldozer.

  “Load the carbines, and get them passed out to the defenders,” Tess said, grabbing a carbine and slotting a loaded magazine into place.

  “No,” Avalon said. “That’s too inefficient. We will load weapons for those in these two central bulldozers. Injured people are atop that rear-most crane. We need to get them aboard, and get them loading magazines, too. Mr Magaia, Zachary, fetch them. If required, we’ll use this bus to retreat at least as far as the end of the bridge. Well?” she added. “Why are you waiting? Leo, grab those magazines. Tess, the guns. Zachary, drive back and fetch the wounded.”

  “Do it,” Tess said, loading another carbine, jumping off, and then climbing up to the dozer on which their guide, Hawker, and two other women shot the undead.

  “Loaded guns,” Tess said, placing a carbine next to each of the local women, before raising one of her own. She lowered it without firing a shot, but not for the lack of a target. Four hundred metres lay between this central barricade and the barrier at the bridge’s western shore, and each square metre contained at least one of the undead. Pushing. Shoving. Scrumming towards the thick-steeled construction machines. Some in rags, some in uniform, some already mutilated from a previous fight.

  With the locals now armed with fast-firing carbines, and with her soldiers firing precise single shots at an almost fully automatic pace, a wall of aimed lead was being flung into the slow-moving horde. But not all shots were kills. The sound of gunfire was too great to call out targets. Gore sprayed from shoulders, arced from backs, pulsed from chests, but nothing other than a headshot would stop these living demons.

  The bulldozers, if they had fuel, could advance, but only if each advanced at the exact same speed. Anything else would open a gap through which the undead would squirm, slither, and slide behind their lines, trapping them, and dooming the children still trapped in Inhambane. But the corpses were beginning to form an uneven mound in front of the dozer’s giant blades. While the giant mining machines shook under the pressure of the surging death-wave, they weren’t moving, but they would soon be swamped, overwhelmed.

  “Magazine!” Hawker called.

  “Loaded rifle!” Tess replied, holding out her carbine.

  “Good on ya, but we need mags!”

  “On it,” she said, and jumped back down.

  Over the sound of flesh beating steel, of lead smashing skull, and the whisper of air concertinaing from dead lungs, came the bus’s struggling growl. Zach was behind the wheel, and spun the bus in a brake-squealing, rubber-burning, dust-flinging, one-hundred-degree turn. Aboard were four women, and Luis Magaia.

  “There’s two more ladies up on the crane,” Zach said. “But they’re unconscious. I need Clyde and Nicko to help get them down.”

  “They’re safe where they are for now,” Tess said. “Zach, Luis, take the loaded rifles to dozers. Bring back the empties. Mags and guns. Ladies, hi. We’re loading,” she said, ripping the lid from an ammo crate.

  Each M4-carbine was shipped with a magazine, but unloaded. Magazine-less carbines now littered the floor, while only one crate of guns had yet to be opened. She grabbed a carbine, and ejected the magazine.

  “We know what to do,” a woman said. “The bullets go in… this way around.”

  It wasn’t a question, and was followed by instructions in Portuguese, directed at the two women with bandaged legs, then in Arabic for the woman whose head and neck were covered in gauze.

  Tess followed those same instructions, and began stripping the remaining carbines of their magazines.

  “Are you New Zealanders from the battleship?” the woman asked, not taking her eyes from the magazine.

  “Australians from the plane,” Tess said. “My name’s Tess Qwong.”

  “Laila Tembe,” the woman said. Her accent was learned-from-a-tutor British that Tess associated with the old black and white English movies her mother had loved though never understood. Laila wore a brown hijab and a white shirt, both splattered with blood. The left sleeve had been cut away so that a bandage could be affixed to her arm. “I was bitten an hour ago,” Laila added. “Please be ready.”

  Tess undid the flap of her holster. “Understood.”

  “Thank you,” Laila said. “The planes have arrived for the children?”

  “I’m sorry, no, not yet. We thought all the refugees had already been evacuated. My pilot’s fetching more planes, but it’ll be another day before they arrive.”

  “A whole day?” Her face tightened, but her hands didn’t stop moving. “Then we must fight for one more day. Just one more.”

  The magazines now removed, Tess began loading. “What happened here? Where are the tank drivers?”

  “Gone,” Laila said. “All the others left.”

  “They crossed the bridge?

  “They went south,” Laila said. “Across other bridges.”

  “More please!” Zach said, jumping aboard.

  “Help yourself,” Tess said.

  “This is something, isn’t it?” Zach said, and sounded genuinely enthused. But he was gone before Tess could formulate a reply.

  “Better to be excited than terrified,” Laila said, as if reading Tess’s thoughts. “My brother was the same.”

  “Did he make it this far?” Tess asked.

  “He’s alive. Waiting for a plane,” Laila said. “But he was caught in the fire. The explosion, as was Saleema.” She nodded to the woman whose head and shoulders were bandaged.

  “Explosion?” Tess asked. “What happened here?”

  “We fought. We fight. Some gave up,” Laila said. “More were here. A rear guard. They left when this defensive line was breached. We remained because we must keep the dead souls away from the children.”

  “Those are your kids at the airport?” Tess asked.

  Laila laughed, and when she translated Tess’s question into Portuguese and then Arabic, so did two of the other women, while Saleema gave a wetly guttural grunt. “We’re not married,” Laila said. “We’re nurses. We brought the children here from the hospital. We wanted to put them on a boat to Madagascar where they would be safe. So we were told.”

  “Ah, got it,” Tess said.

  “G’day, ladies,” Oakes said, appearing in the door. “The name’s Nicko. I’m told one of you knows which of those tanks was fired this morning.”

  “At the end of the bridge, next to the crane,” Laila said.

  “Bonzer,” Oakes said. “Mind your ears, there’s gonna be a bang.”

  “Wait, Oakes!” Tess began, but the sergeant was already sprinting back along the bridge.

  “Any more?” Leo asked, taking Oakes’s place a second later.

  “Take what you can,” Tess said, her fingers twitching as she kept on reloading.

  The bandaged woman, Saleema, hissed a pained question in Arabic.

  “Is she all right?” Tess asked.

  “Second-degree burns,” Laila said. “She would like to know if you’re a soldier.”

  “I’m a police officer,” Tess said.

  “Police?” Laila translated. Saleema gave a rasping reply. Laila laughed, then spoke in Portuguese. The other two women laughed in turn. “She asked if you’ve come to arrest the zombies for loitering or for littering,” Laila said.

  Tess forced a chuckle. “Hey, at this point, I’m willing to try anything.”

  A loud pop came from the north, a sound Tess didn’t have time to interpret before a massive explosion erupted in the south, drowning the irregular drumroll of rifle fire. The bus shook. The windows rattled. Tess’s heart skipped a beat.

  “We had three tank shells left when the tank drivers ran,” Laila said calmly.

  And the second was fired a moment later. The third so swiftly afterward that the bus didn’t have time to settle between each mini-quake.

  Tess picked up a
carbine, slotting a magazine into place, but placed the M4 next to her leg.

  Laila did the same. “My sisters and I will ensure you can retreat,” she said.

  “We’ll all retreat together,” Tess said. “Get ready for the rush,” she added, seeing Zach jump down from the dozer.

  “Yeah, it’s over,” Zach said. “You should have seen the explosion. It was awesome!”

  Gunfire crackled from the barricade.

  “If it’s over, why are they still shooting?” Tess said. “Take over. Finish loading the magazines.” She paused in the doorway. “Zach, this woman was bitten. She might turn.”

  “Oh,” he said, suddenly deflating. “I… What do I do?”

  “Kill me, if you have to,” Laila said calmly. “Sit down. There is work to be done before then.”

  Chapter 8 - A Bridge Too Far

  Rio Mutamba, Mozambique

  Tess held tight to the edge of the dozer’s cab as she leaned forward, but she couldn’t lean far enough. “I see what you mean,” she said. “You can’t see the zombies lying right up against the blade.”

  Below, the living ghouls banged and clawed, slithered and crawled over each other, only occasionally managing to stand and present their heads as a target for Clyde or Toppley. Everyone else held their fire. For now.

  The bridge-way had become an open graveyard of occasionally moving corpses. Hundreds of dead had created a thick mat close to the dozer, thinning towards the barricade at the bridge’s far end. Beyond, and below, more milled and gathered around the large craters the tank’s shells had left at the edge of the flood plain. They came from inland, and from east and west, and from among the long grasses of the lush river basin immediately below the bridge.

  “How many zoms are still down there, close to the dozers?” Tess asked.

  “Assume fifty for the purposes of planning,” Hawker said. “We can’t move the dozers without opening a point of entry. It’s a solid defensive line. We can hold against two more similar assaults. The trouble will come from below. That river isn’t wide enough to stop them.”