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

by Tayell, Frank

  “Clyde, check the toy-store. Bruce, radio the ship,” Tess said. “Everyone, keep your eyes open for zombies.” She turned to the children. “My name is Tess Qwong. I’m a police commissioner from Australia. That man with the grumpy squint is Colonel Hawker of the Australian SAS.”

  Oakes sniggered.

  “Everyone else is either one of my police officers, a sailor from the ship, or one of the colonel’s soldiers,” Tess continued. “What are your names?”

  “Lesadi,” the girl said.

  “I’m Thato,” the boy said.

  “Did you live here?” Tess asked.

  “Here?” the boy asked. He laughed.

  “In Cape Town, yes,” the girl said.

  “Store looks clear,” Clyde said, pausing by the door. “Did you set up any traps in there?”

  “Not in there,” the boy said. “Of course not.”

  “The helicopter’s on Robben Island,” Hawker said. “They’ll return to the ship, grab more sailors, and then head on to the airport. They found hostiles on Robben Island.”

  “D’you mean zombies or people?” Tess asked.

  “Four zoms,” Hawker said. “There’s no sign of any living survivors, but two yachts had been docked at the pier. Whoever sailed them there, didn’t leave. As they didn’t deal with the zoms, we’re unlikely to find any survivors on the island. How long would it take to walk to the airport?”

  “I can run there in ten minutes,” Thato said.

  “You can’t,” Lesadi said. “But I can.”

  “Both of you are staying here with me,” Tess said. “Bruce, take the radio. Stay in contact with the ship. We’ll head back to the boat once we’ve assessed the food supplies. Clyde, Mackay, go with the colonel. Will that be enough?”

  “More than plenty,” Bruce said.

  “Wait,” Leo said, unhooking the Geiger counter. “Take this.”

  Tess handed her spare ammo to Clyde. “Good luck, Major.”

  “Luck comes to those who make it,” Clyde said. “What’s the safest route to the airport?”

  Lesadi pointed down the road. “That way. There are plenty of signs.”

  “I’ll show you,” Thato said.

  “No you don’t,” Tess said, laying a hand on his shoulder as Hawker and Oakes, Clyde and Mackay, began running. “Everyone get inside the toyshop.”

  Tess looked back up the street where the four warriors were already out of sight.

  “They sure can run,” Leo said.

  “I feel sorry for Mr Mackay,” Tess said.

  “Oh, he can keep up, ma’am,” Sullivan said. “He once nearly lasted five rounds in the ring with the captain.”

  Chapter 19 - Rooftop Safari

  Cape Town, South Africa

  “The waterfront’s not the first place I’d expect to find a toy store,” Leo said.

  “But a toyshop is the last place I’d think to look for a food stash,” Tess said. “Very clever.”

  Blankets and sheets shrouded shoulder-high stacks of canned food. More cardboard trays of shrink-wrapped tins were arrayed on shelves from which the toys had been swept.

  “Black beans,” Leo said, pulling off a sheet. “Chick peas. Oh, grapefruit! Now that’s worth far more than a dollar.”

  “Sorry, Doc, the African Union soldiers get priority,” Tess said. “Since they got here before us, they can’t have stopped for supplies, and probably not even to eat.”

  “It’s impressive, yes?” Lesadi asked.

  “Very,” Tess said. “It’s a very clever hiding place. Did this come from a supermarket? A grocery store?”

  “From a delivery truck,” Lesadi said.

  “Two delivery trucks,” Thato said. “They were parked over there.” He waved his hand towards the rear of the store. “The driver was—”

  “A zombie,” Lesadi said quickly.

  “A mother. With her baby,” Thato finished.

  “Good on ya,” Tess said. “You’re real heroes for keeping this safe.”

  “It’ll be enough to feed everyone!” Thato said.

  “I hope so,” Tess said. But she doubted it. “Help Teegan catalogue it.”

  “Commish! You won’t believe it!” Zach said, holding up something which had once been part of a window display.

  “Is that a DVD?” she asked.

  “Not just any DVD,” Zach said. “It’s The Bouncing Dog Sled. By Dan Blaze!” he added. “I know what I’m watching tonight.”

  “You want to watch a kids’ movie?” Sullivan asked.

  “Yeah, because he’s the singer back in Canberra,” Zach said.

  “Put it in your bag,” Tess said. “Then go help Teegan.” She took a step closer, and lowered her voice. “Chat with the kids. Let them talk, and you listen. Get a feel for what happened in the city during this last month. Find out what happened to everyone else.”

  She crossed to the other side of the plate-glass window, where Sullivan was watching the street. Leo followed.

  “It’s about five thousand meals,” the scientist said, his voice low.

  “It won’t be enough to feed the African Union soldiers,” Sullivan said.

  “But it’s a start,” Tess said. “We’ll have to catch a few fish off the coast. We can, can’t we, Leo?”

  “You mean with the radiation readings? Sure, in deeper water. This month. Probably next month, too. Ask me again after that. Did you notice there were no boats in the marina, and no cars parked outside here?”

  “But if you drove to a store, you’d drive home again, right?” Sullivan said.

  “But the people who sailed away from the marina would have driven to the docks,” Leo said. “Who took their cars?”

  “Plenty of people in this city wouldn’t own a car,” Tess said. “They walked to the harbour, saw the boats were gone, but that cars had been left with keys in the ignition. The ship reported two boats made it to Robben Island, and the sailors made contact with four zoms. It’s unlikely there are any survivors there.”

  “Where did the other boats go?” Sullivan asked.

  “Madagascar,” Tess said. “How many people lived in Cape Town before the outbreak, Leo?”

  “About five million,” he said. “About fifty million in South Africa.”

  “They were evacuating from Durban,” Tess said. “But Durban was overwhelmed, and people went north, to Maputo, and it, too was overwhelmed, and so that teacher we met went to Inhambane. If you lived here, and planes were falling from the sky, and someone said they were evacuating from Durban, wouldn’t you go? By boat, or by car, or on foot. It’s what they did, and so the evacuation failed. Of course it did. Look at the struggle we had just getting the kids down to Tassie.”

  “I wonder how the Brits managed it,” Leo said. “For years, I’ve been telling the world that you’ve got to stay in place, stay home and look after your neighbours. But no one wants to prepare for a blizzard while extinguishing a wildfire.”

  “Commissioner,” Toppley said, coming over. “We might have a problem.”

  “With the food?” Tess asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Toppley said. “The children gathered this food, but their stockpile, and their base here in this shopping precinct, was seized from them a week ago. They, their entire group, relocated to the airport. The thieves remained. It’s they for whom the traps were set. The children had been attempting to lure zombies here to finish the thieves.”

  “How many thieves?” Tess asked.

  “Two or three, all armed with guns,” Toppley said.

  “Have you made a note of how much food is here?” Tess asked. “Then we’ll return to the boat. Send the kids back to the ship, and come back with some more sailors to secure this place. And with another radio.”

  “And more dosimeters,” Leo said.

  “And some handcarts for—” Sullivan began, but stopped as the window shattered. Glass fell either side of the up-turned display-table even as they all ducked.

  “Rooftop opposite
!” Toppley said. “Single sniper.”

  “Everyone stay down!” Tess said. “Zach, get the kids behind the counter.”

  A bullet thudded into the floor. A second hit the door.

  “Suppressed rifle!” Toppley said, hidden behind a low stack of canned papaya. “Single shots.”

  “So far,” Tess said. “I need a mirror. Teegan? Sullivan? Sullivan!”

  Where the others had dropped, Sullivan had fallen, hands clenched to her side. “It’s fine,” she hissed.

  Tess crawling across the broken glass to the injured sailor. “Not too bad,” she said as she took out the med-kit. “It’ll make a nice scar.”

  “Pippa?” Zach called.

  “Stay there, Zach!” Sullivan said.

  “Let me take care of her, eh?” Leo said, taking the med-kit from Tess. “You take care of the sniper.”

  “Teegan, did you see the target?” Tess asked.

  “On the rooftop above the parking garage. Furthest corner from the above-road walkway,” she said. “He stood up to take the shot.”

  A second bullet flew through the broken window and ripped through the soft plastic floor tiles equidistant between Tess and Leo.

  “We’ll move Pippa back. On three,” Tess said, grabbing one of Sullivan’s arms as Leo grabbed the other, and Teegan raised her carbine above her head, firing half a magazine blind.

  “No!” Tess hissed, even as Teegan shuffled across the glass just as a third bullet slammed into the floor. A second later, a short burst followed, but Toppley was braced behind the pillar supporting the window-frame, and Sullivan was now behind a stack of canned goods.

  “The sniper’s got a suppressor,” Tess said.

  “Yes, I told you that,” Toppley said.

  “No, Teegan, think of the zoms,” Tess said.

  “Ah, apologies, Commissioner,” Toppley said.

  “How’s Pippa, she okay?” Zach asked.

  “You can ask me,” Sullivan hissed.

  “Oh, sorry,” Zach said, but he sounded relieved.

  “It could be an hour before assistance comes,” Toppley said, “but if assistance comes in the form of a helicopter, they could be shot down.”

  “No worries, we’re not waiting,” Tess said. “Lesadi you brought this food in from somewhere behind this store, yes? So there’s a back door?”

  “Through there, yes,” the girl said, pointing at the door behind the counter.

  “Toppley, watch the front. Zach, safety off, but finger off the trigger, too. Toppley is in command.”

  “Where are you going?” Leo asked.

  “To find us a way out,” Tess said, drawing her nine-mil, and attaching her own suppressor.

  The Queensland opal mine, the Telstra Tower, the museum: people shooting at her was becoming too regular an occurrence. The difference here was she didn’t have to shoot back. The ship’s cannon could level that entire building with one shot, assuming she could make contact with the ship. Oh, if only she had a radio. The priority was getting Sullivan somewhere more secure, and if the sniper was protecting this food stash, then absolutely anywhere else would suffice.

  The door led to the stockroom, and to another door. The lock was broken. It didn’t lead outside, but almost into the arms of a zombie. She had her suppressed sidearm in hand, and fired, both shots hitting the zombie’s chest, but the impacts didn’t slow the back-swung hand which slammed into the side of Tess’s head. She rolled with the impact, diving to the floor, firing up even as the zombie turned. Two shots: the first up through the chin, the second through the face, both exiting through the brain. The zombie slumped, and she had to roll again to get out of the way.

  It wore a bright red short-sleeved shirt, black multi-pocketed trousers, and designer sneakers which still had the price-and-size sticker on the sole. But the bulletproof vest was almost as interesting as the empty hip-holster. Very new shoes, donned just before he’d been infected, and clean enough they’d done less than a mile of walking. Why wear the vest unless expecting trouble from humans? Hopefully, he was one of the thieves.

  She was in a service stairwell. Three steps led down to an exterior door. Not made of glass, but heavily reinforced metal in which were two separate locks. Both locks had keys in them, but both keys had been snapped off. By the thieves, she assumed, leaving only the main-road access point for the toy-store, which could easily be covered by a sniper.

  She heard footsteps coming down the stairs, raised her gun, and fired at the zombie even before she saw the shotgun in his hand. One shot to the vest, the second to the face, and he tumbled and fell, onto the corpse of his dead friend. Two thieves dead. One infected. One human. Hopefully only one thief was left, and as far as she could see, only one option was available to her. She paused a heartbeat, tilting her head, listening, before re-opening the stockroom door.

  “Zach!” she called.

  “Yes, boss?”

  “Seal up this door. Remember rule-one? That’s our call sign. Counter is rule-two, got it? I think two thieves are dead, leaving only the sniper on the roof. I’ll be back in ten.”

  “Wait,” Zach said, but Tess didn’t. She pulled the door closed, and ran up the stairs.

  At the next landing was another door, and more stairs going up. But the walkway to the garage, and the larger half of the shopping precinct, was on this floor, wasn’t it? Hopefully. Gun raised, she pulled the door open. Unlocked. It led into an office. From the logos, it belonged to the toy-store. The office had two other doors, and the one she picked led into a dim hallway: a maintenance corridor with small cubbyhole storage rooms and a pair of nearly windowless doors which had been hacked to splinters. Walking quickly but quietly, she stepped around the debris, gun raised, sweeping wide as she entered the customer-facing part of the shopping centre. Shutters were down everywhere, but with carts, bags, and tools parked outside the broken-open entrances. Ignoring those, she saw what she wanted: the universal P for parking, and an arrow showing her the way.

  Another set of fire doors would have sealed the across-road walkway, but again they’d been hacked to splinters. From their partial cover, she leaned forward, looking upward at the rooftop across the road. She heard the distant impact, but not the gunfire, not until someone inside the toy-store returned fire. Bullets sprayed the wall beneath the roof. A second after they finished, she saw the man rise above the edge of the roof, rifle in hand, fire a shot, then disappear again.

  Clearly, he was a professional. But he wasn’t trying to kill her team, merely keep them pinned while he waited on his comrades to attack from the rear. Tess ran as fast as her hip would allow, across the walkway, and through another set of hacked-apart doors. While the walkway became an upstairs concourse into a broader shopping precinct, to the left was an access door, propped open with a broad machete which, oddly, was attached to a long length of metal wire. Inside, more knives, attached to more lengths of wire, dotted the floor. Broken traps.

  The door led to service stairs. The down-flight was partially blocked with wire-grill delivery crates. Below, out of sight but very audible, undead flesh pushed and slapped against metal and concrete. She went up. At the top was another propped-open door leading into a storage area filled with mops, buckets, and cleaning liquid. But steps led up to a door-hatch flush with the sloping roof. Gun close to her chest, she pushed the door open, stepping up and outside.

  The roof dropped from a high V at the front to flat at the back, changing from opaque to transparent above the shopping area. She stood on the metal gutter in the dip between two Vs, hidden from the far corner, but the roof was too steep here to climb over, let alone clamber up and shoot.

  Unmoving, she waited, listening, until she heard a solitary brass cartridge tinkle to the gutter. Shoes squeaked. A long moment later, a return burst from Toppley tore chunks out of the brickwork.

  The thin layer of ash offered a cushion for her feet as she made her way along the gutter, towards the flattened roof. Walking in a half crouch, she kept moving
until she reached a nearly flat section where the glass had been reinforced with an internal metal grid. Assuming it could take her weight, she walked, gun raised, quickly, seeing the shooter a second before he heard her.

  “Police! Freeze! Drop your weapon!” she called, hoping her accent would do as much as the words to make the man pause. He wore camouflage, but of the safari kind. The same pattern was on his hat and his bulletproof vest. In his hands was a suppressed rifle with a collapsible stock and extended magazine. Right now, it was aimed at ninety-degrees to her, held across the man’s body as he crouched low, close to the wall’s edge.

  “Police! We’re with the African Union, and the warship in the harbour,” she said. “This is a misunderstanding. No one else has to die.”

  Slowly, without turning around, or rising from his crouch, he released his right hand from the rifle’s grip, raising the hand high. With his left hand, he placed the rifle down on the ground. Without turning around, he stood. But his left hand slipped in front of his body, and so out of sight.

  “Both hands,” Tess said. “Let me see both—”

  He spun. She fired. One shot, and into his vest. He doubled over, almost into a ball, dropping the compact metal-framed revolver.

  She’d attached the suppressor to the pistol in case of zombies, unnecessarily as it had turned out, but that had reduced the bullet’s velocity. The man’s vest should have stopped the bullet from penetrating the skin. And it would have, if the vest hadn’t been made of cloth. It wasn’t bulletproof, just a many-pocketed sleeveless jacket designed for hunting, now dripping with blood from the pulsing exit wound.

  Chapter 20 - Nitro Express

  V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, South Africa

  Tess detached the suppressor, and holstered her pistol. “Clear!” she called, pitching her voice to carry. “Remember rule-one!” she added, before stepping forward, arms raised, hands empty. “Check your boots, Teegan!” she yelled, walking to the roof’s edge, and saw the zombies. Three, approaching from the south.

  In addition to the rifle and revolver, the dead hunter had a double-barrelled shotgun with a polished chestnut stock. The suppressed rifle had a camouflage-pattern stock, an extended magazine, and almost as long an optical scope. She raised the rifle to her shoulder, searching for the zombies. It was a very good scope. She could make out the white bone jutting from the zombie’s elbow as the arms loosely swung with each step. Yes, a good scope. Too good. More than good enough to make out the small lamb dangling from the hair-tie on the too-small figure’s one remaining pigtail. So good she was nearly blinded when she shifted focus to the third, and the beating sun reflected off the length of steel jutting from its shoulder. A metal-handled carving knife. Too long and ornate to be truly practical, even, evidently, as a weapon. Four shots, less than a minute, and the zombies were down.