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

by Tayell, Frank

  “Dud,” Clyde whispered, his voice hoarse. “Grenade was a dud.”

  “So what just happened?” Tess asked, shining her light on the rock-fall covering the second tunnel.

  “Sorry, boss,” Zach said again. “That was me.”

  “The—” Clyde began, coughed, and cleared his throat. “The AT4, right?”

  “Yeah, I just… yeah, sorry,” Zach said.

  The ringing in Tess’s ears dropped in volume, freeing more of her neurons to process the last ten seconds. Zach had fired the missile into the tunnel, well beyond the woman who’d thrown the grenade. The explosion had knocked them all from their feet, but where the antechamber had pillars supporting the roof, the tunnel’s mouth had none. The roof had fallen, blocking the tunnel, and crushing the woman.

  “Back to the exit,” Tess said. “Zach, help Clyde. Clyde, help Zach.”

  But she staggered her way over to the crushed corpse. The woman was dead. Only about thirty, so not one of the sisters. Dressed in beige cargo-shorts and shirt, with a long knife at her belt, and a bag around her neck from which another grenade had fallen. A river of dust fell from the ceiling, directly into the dead woman’s open eyes. Tess shone her light on the woman’s arm, and on the old tattoo: a three-leafed branch.

  “Boss, you coming?” Clyde asked. “Because that roof’s about to come down.”

  “She’s cartel,” Tess said, following them to the exit-tunnel. “Clyde, that C4 upstairs. Is there any chance the detonators were duds?”

  “Like the grenade?” he asked. “Could be. I’ll check upstairs.”

  “She was in the cartel?” Zach asked.

  “That’s right. Someone senior. Had the tattoo, and had it for about a decade.”

  Tess wasn’t sure of the last, but the certainty brought comfort, and not just to Zach.

  “So I did okay?” Zach asked, just as a loud crash shook the tunnel, causing more dust to cascade onto the railway tracks.

  “Next time, try a bullet rather than a bomb,” Clyde said. A growling creak came from behind them, as much a sensation beneath their feet as a sound in the air. “This time, I say we run.”

  “The detonator looks real,” Clyde said, when they’d finally climbed back up and into the house. “There’s an obvious way to test it.”

  “Not around here,” Tess said. “We shouldn’t stay, not when the ground is liable to collapse. Call the ship, Zach. Warn them about the tunnels.”

  “Yeah, there’s no need to radio them,” Zach said, standing in the open door. “They’re outside.”

  Four figures, all in hazmat-orange suits with transparent helmets, walked slowly across the courtyard execution ground. Two carried rifles: Oakes and Hawker. Avalon was recording video. Leo was almost swimming in sweat behind his transparent visor, hauling two bright-blue rigid holdalls, one over each shoulder.

  “What did you do, where did you go, and what did you touch?” Avalon demanded, her voice muffled by the protective face covering.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” Zach asked.

  “You disappeared off radio,” Avalon said. “Who does that?”

  “They deployed VX gas,” Hawker said. “We found about a hundred bodies by the harbour. Locals. They were poisoned on the waterfront.”

  “It wasn’t gas,” Avalon said. “It would have been an aerosol.”

  “VX, seriously?” Tess asked.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” Avalon said. “If you’d touched it, you’d be dead already.”

  “The captain’s recalled everyone to the ship,” Hawker said.

  “What’s VX?” Zach asked.

  “A nerve agent,” Oakes said. “One drop on your skin, and you’ll be dead in minutes.”

  “Is there a cure?” Zach asked.

  “Atropine,” Leo said, holding up one of the two bags. “But it’s not really a cure, so let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah, big needle, straight to the heart,” Oakes said.

  “He’s kidding,” Clyde said.

  “He is? Oh, good,” Zach said.

  “The needle goes into your thigh,” Clyde said.

  “You can continue winding him up when we’re back aboard,” Tess said, looking down at her hands. Assuming they lived that long.

  Chapter 38 - Atropine for the Soul

  Puerto Bolivar, Colombia

  They had to catch a boat back to the ship, and not from the pier, but from a sandy stretch of shore four hundred metres to the east. Zach spent the walk exaggerating what they’d found in the tunnel, talking out of the same fear that kept her quiet. At the boat, they had to strip, with most of their gear left on the shore. Clothing and weapons could be replaced, though they kept the memory card, and the phone on which she’d been recording video since the helicopter had dropped them off. At the ship, they had to go through a decontamination scrub, after which she was exhausted.

  “You’re clear,” Avalon said, handing her a towel.

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’d be dead if you weren’t,” she said, returning the atropine back to the case. “There are clothes here, and the captain wants to see you on the bridge.”

  “Are you certain it was VX?” Tess asked.

  “Either that, or something with very similar effects,” Avalon said without a trace of her usual logical stubbornness. “I’ll have a report for you and the captain within the hour.”

  The shower-damp helped hide the fear-sweat as she made her way to the bridge. Leo and Bruce were already there, as were a full watch of sailors.

  “I apologise, Commissioner,” the captain said. “Had we flown the helicopter over the pier first, we would have seen the dead flamingos among the bodies of the people.”

  “Dead flamingos?” Tess asked.

  “They must have arrived after the nerve agent was deployed,” Adams said.

  “Probably an air-burst missile rather than artillery,” Leo said, “but I think it was deployed from the east. Doctor Avalon will provide a more definitive answer in a few hours.”

  “Are you sure it was VX?” Tess asked.

  “Yes. From the position of the bodies, how quickly they died, how mothers were shielding their children,” Leo said. “There are other indicators, too.”

  “We’ll get to that,” Adams said. “Tell her about the recording on the memory card.”

  “Did you watch it?” Tess asked.

  “Yes, but I’ve seen the first half of the footage before,” Leo said. “The second half is the torture and execution of the three people crucified in the courtyard. The first half was uploaded online before the internet finally collapsed. Back in Canberra, I was collecting all the footage people had grabbed before the net went down, and found dozens of copies of this file. Thirty-six people all took it in turns to speak to the camera, to say a few words of encouragement. Not to each other, but to the world. The gist being that if we all stood together, forgot past differences, past enmities, we could defeat the horror. The clip ends with a priest giving a blessing, telling the camera, as much as his flock, that if they don’t give into fear, they can still restore this Garden of Eden. That’s when they opened the gates and attacked.”

  “The defenders opened the gates?” Tess asked. “They wanted to die?”

  “They wanted repentance,” Adams said. “They knew for whom they worked. I understand you found supplies in the tunnels. Assault rifles, medicine, and food. These locals dug those tunnels. They knew what was down there. Knew who had hidden it. I suspect they knew why, too.”

  “There were more than thirty-six bodies at the pier,” Leo said. “A lot of them were kids. I think the message, and their intent, was as the captain said, but these people had a more immediate need to rescue their families who were trapped nearby. That’s why they attacked rather than fought a defence.”

  “That’s the first half of the video?” Tess asked. “And the second half is the torture and execution of those three?”

  “Yes, I’ve got it cued up here if you want to
watch,” Leo said, pointing at a screen.

  “No, I’ve seen the end result,” Tess said, though she reflexively turned to look. “Hang about. That’s the woman from the tunnel. Her, in the blue shirt. She’s… she’s not armed. But she’s watching the camera.”

  “Watching the audience,” Leo said. “I’m certain there was one. I’ve not yet determined whether it was locals, or guards.”

  “I’ll take a look at that later,” Tess said. In the still, a man in an immaculate white suit, with an equally immaculate goatee, held a long, thin, flensing knife above his head. With his arm raised, she could see the belt and holster, made of reptile-skin, which matched the boots on his feet. “Yes, I’ll take another look at this later. But was that blue-shirt woman in any of the earlier footage?”

  “Not that I remember,” Leo said. “I’d have to look again.”

  “Later,” Tess said. “We found crates of AKMs in the tunnels. Some medical supplies and food, but we only saw a small fraction of their total stash. The tunnel must run from the house all the way to the coal mine, and must have been excavated from that direction. I don’t know precisely how many rifles were down there, but we saw no ammunition. They’d stashed a few AT4 anti-tank missiles, so there could be other military supplies down there. Most of what we saw was off-the-shelf survivalist supplies. Solar panels, lights, compact generators, bikes, even a few self-assembly canoes. From the quantity, and almost random nature of it all, I reckon it was bought in panic by someone for whom money was no object, but who’d just learned the world was about to end. Say a senior member of a drug gang with a box of fake credit cards, or a suitcase of laundered cash. It could have been bought online, or in a big-box store. Bought, I think, by that woman we found down in the tunnel.”

  “She was a member of the cartel?” Adams asked.

  “Yes, she was,” Tess said. “What I don’t know, and what we need to work out, is whether she was left there to guard the place against when the sisters came back, or whether she was abandoned there to die. In either case, she seemed to be living below ground.”

  “Because of the VX above,” Leo said.

  “The grenade she threw was a dud,” Tess said. “I have my doubts about the detonators attached to the C4 built into the walls of the house, but we left the detonator on the shore with our gear. Would it be safe to return to collect more evidence?”

  “Let’s put a pin in that question for now,” Adams said. “What do you think happened here?”

  “The zoms arrived after dark,” Tess said. “The locals didn’t have much time to throw up defences. They, or some of them, fought a fighting retreat back to that big house. They must have raided the tunnels for weapons. They recorded that apology and exhortation, and uploaded it to the net, and then the locals attacked. Some survived. And if Leo saw that video before, then this all happened near the beginning of the outbreak. The locals didn’t clear away the bodies, so they made camp somewhere else, but close by. They gathered food from their own houses and ate that before raiding the underground stash.”

  “They were terrified of the cartel, even after the outbreak,” Adams said. “Terrified for good reason, judging by that video. There are two large shipwrecks in the bay. It’s possible those brought the infection here. The ships were sunk with portable artillery in an attempt to stop the undead. With the ships sunk, there was no escape by sea. But why didn’t they flee by land?”

  “Because they hoped the sisters were dead,” Tess said. “And if they had been, then here was a remote bastion with enough supplies to last until the world began to recover. After the nuclear war began, maybe they thought they really were safe. Except the sisters did come.”

  “There are no sixty-year-old women in that footage,” Adams said.

  “That doesn’t mean they didn’t come here themselves,” Tess said. “They’d know never to be caught on camera at a crime scene. I saw murders like that in Canberra, and in Broken Hill. People skinned alive. They employed torturers, each of whom was trained to use the same M.O. Back before the outbreak, we thought it was work of an international serial killer, and I think that was the point. It threw us off the scent, while instilling fear in the gangsters who were in the know. You said they used VX?”

  “Or a new nerve agent with very similar effects,” Leo said. “But it’s probably VX.”

  “Where did it come from?” Tess asked.

  “Originally, Porton Down in England in the 1950s,” Leo said. “But it was banned back in 1993. North Korea never signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, and instead kept a crazy-huge stockpile ready to be deployed in the event of an invasion from the south. VX has a low volatility. It lingers, making it an ideal defensive area-denial weapon. That you aren’t dead suggests a low-altitude dispersal. I’d say they gathered the locals at the pier, together, and clearly packed for travel. It could mean they only had a very limited supply, rather than enough to drench the entire bay.”

  “Sir Malcolm Baker mentioned North Korea had a link to the sisters,” Tess said. “But would that living-crime of a government have been insane enough to give a pair of narco-queens a WMD?”

  “The Russians poured money into biochemical R&D,” Adams said. “What was the name of their lab? The Kamera. Could it have come from there?”

  “It could have come from anywhere,” Leo said. “But it’s most likely to have come from the same lab-network that developed compound-zom.”

  “You mean the zombie virus?” Tess asked. “Is there anyway of nailing down some of these theories?”

  “Not without risk and time,” Leo said.

  “We’ve run out of time,” Adams said. “Commissioner, what is your assessment of the supplies down in those tunnels?”

  “The tunnels are extensive,” Tess said. “I didn’t see enough of the contents to form a conclusion. It’s reasonable to assume the sisters laid in enough rifles and food to turn those miners into an army. Say, enough food to keep a thousand alive for a year.”

  “Dr Smilovitz, how long before it would be safe to use that pier again?” Adams asked.

  “I’d prefer to wait a year,” he said. “A month is probably sufficient. It’s possible that it’s safe now, but I’d want to send in a canary first. Or a flamingo.”

  “Let me rephrase the question,” Adams said. “Could the sisters return tomorrow to claim what is down in the tunnels?”

  “Sure. They’d have no qualms about using a person to test the pier,” Leo said.

  “Ashore, there is a vast quantity of coal, and of mining machines, and of diesel for the machines and the ships,” Adams said. “They alone are reasons for the sisters to return. Commissioner, was there any sign of the laboratory?”

  “Not beneath the house,” Tess said. “And not in the town, but I can’t begin to guess how extensive those tunnels are.”

  “Dr Smilovitz, if we return to shore, it would be to search for the laboratory. You understand the risks, and the potential benefits. Is it worth it?”

  Leo looked down at the screen, still displaying the frozen image of the torturer about to begin work. He turned to the bridge window. Tess watched, as did everyone else on the bridge.

  “No,” he finally said. “The lab could be here. If the locals believed their work had helped make Hell a reality, it would better explain the video they uploaded. But if they dug one tunnel, why not two? There could be more guards, more gas, and maybe more zoms. But if this was where the sisters developed it, when they came back, they would have destroyed the lab, and taken the research with them.”

  “Commissioner? It was your investigation which brought us here.” Adams left the question half asked.

  “I’d love to search it properly,” Tess said. “I want to know where the sisters went. But the risk is too great. You’re thinking of blowing the place up?”

  “They have mining machines, they could excavate the tunnels,” Adams said. “We’ll destroy the runway, the pier, the above-ground fuel storage, and the mansion. They left that recor
ding as a message to whoever came looking for them. It was a message to instil fear. Let them experience that feeling. Let them know we came. Let them think we are looking for them still. But we shall make for the canal and then return home. Let them live in fear, and let them die that way, too.”

  It was a nice line, Tess thought, as she left the bridge. But it was a message for the crew. A way of making failure seem like a victory. They had failed. They hadn’t found, or destroyed, the lab. The cartel had escaped. Though they might destroy this supply cache, the sisters clearly had some other lair that was surely better equipped.

  Her feet took her to the deck, where she went looking for shade, and found Zach, lurking near the stern.

  “If you’re going to hang around out here, you’ll need a hat,” she said. “The sun’s fit to boil the ocean. You all right?”

  “I’ve got logs for legs,” he said, bracing hands and feet against the rail, rocking back, stretching. “Yeah, that was intense.”

  “It was a bit,” Tess said. “How are you doing with it all?”

  “You mean after atomising a lady with a missile? Yeah, nah, I’m cool. I mean, you’re asking if it bothers me? She was trying to kill us, and she was one of the people who tried to take over Oz, right?”

  “Defo,” Tess said. “We’ve got her on video. On that memory card. She was one of the torturers.”

  “Cool. Cool,” Zach said, with an air of relief. “I didn’t mean to fire. I just had the bazooka in my hands. It was automatic, I guess.”

  “You’ve got good instincts,” Tess said.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want to do it again. I can’t believe Clyde jumped on a grenade. I didn’t think people did that in real life. I mean, I don’t think I’d ever do that.”

  “Nor me,” Tess said.

  “Is that something they train you for in the army?”

  “I think that’s instinct, too,” Tess said.

  “That woman, she was evil, right?”

  “Absolutely. You saved me and Clyde, and probably the ship, too. One of those missiles could have done some serious damage.”