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

by Tayell, Frank

  “Cool,” he said. He sighed. “Is it always like this?”

  “Policing or war?”

  “Both. I dunno. Yeah, I’m gonna be a librarian. Definitely. That stuff in the tunnel was weird, right? It’s like… it’s like what I would have bought if I’d been prepping for the end of the world.”

  “Yeah, some of it would have been useful,” Tess said. “Not sure about the canoes, though.”

  “No, like it’s not what you’d buy if you were super-rich.”

  “The super-rich all bought bunkers in New Zealand,” Tess said. “Pretty sure none of them made it down there after the airspace was shut down.”

  “Commander Tusitala says they had a plan to nationalise all the bunkers anyway,” Zach said. “She said it was a mega-bucks stealth-tax to cover the Kiwi disaster planning. All those places with solar panels and wind farms are perfect for refugee camps. She says you’ve got to be a particular kind of stupid to think money would help after a nuclear war.”

  “A particular kind of arrogant,” Tess said.

  “But the sisters weren’t,” Zach said. “They weren’t stupid. That woman, she bought canoes and bikes. Lots of them. But no petrol for her generator. Was she going to paddle through the desert? Or cycle? But the sisters bought guns. Lots of guns, and missiles, and explosives, because we found those in the house, too. No, they weren’t stupid.”

  “They were scared,” Tess said.

  “Seriously? Them?”

  “They left that video. Not just the bodies, but the video, too, to make sure whoever came here knew exactly why those people were tortured.”

  “That doesn’t sound like scared,” Zach said.

  “Think about it. They struck deals with politicians who, later, started a nuclear war. The sisters knew those politicians would come after them, but that they’d send their armies. Or perhaps just their submarines.”

  “Like that Russian one?”

  “Yep. Or the British sub. Or they thought someone like Malcolm Baker would tell someone like Lignatiev, and they’d send a navy to destroy the evidence. That’s who the message was for, the Sir Malcolm Bakers of the world. Ultimately, that’s whom the sisters were terrified of. Nemesis. Destiny. And it’s who they’ll be thinking of every night until they die.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m still terrified of them,” he said. “The tunnels would have been expensive, right? The tunnels and all the stuff stashed in them?”

  “Very. They required running an entire mining town as cover. Probably blackmailed their way into getting it for free, but the workers would need wages and supplies.”

  “So there won’t be another underground base somewhere?” Zach asked. “Because there’s lots of mines in Australia.”

  “I’d say no, not in Australia,” Tess said. “I’m still piecing together what they considered a best-case scenario. Essentially, they got in so deep their only way out was to destroy civilisation. I’m not so blind as to say it’s impossible for them to have bought a lair in Australia, but buying a mine anywhere would attract attention, either from locals, from the regulators, or from protestors. And, of course, from the politicians they were in league with. No, I think there was only one mine.”

  “But probably more supplies somewhere else,” Zach said.

  “Probably,” Tess said. “But the guns were for an army. The miners are dead. No way will they find another.”

  “There you are, Zach,” Clyde said, clambering out the water-lock door. “I was looking for you.”

  “You were?” Zach said.

  Clyde held out a bottle of the fizzy orange soda. “Thanks for saving my life, mate.”

  “Me? You were the one who jumped on the grenade.”

  “I was bloody lucky it was a dud. Wouldn’t have stopped her from flinging another our way. Good on ya. I’d give you a medal, but this is better.”

  “No worries,” Zach said, taking the bottle. “You want to share?”

  Clyde pulled another two bottles from his bag. “I snaffled a couple more when the purser wasn’t looking. We better destroy the evidence.”

  “You worked with explosives in the army, didn’t you?” Zach asked.

  “I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it,” Clyde said. “I do know I don’t want to. Afterward, I wanted to help rebuild. But there’s not much point beating a bloke’s sword into a plough if a forgotten bomblet will take out his tractor. So I got a job clearing up the land.”

  “You can’t talk about it?” Zach asked. “So it’s like a national secret or something?”

  “It’s classified,” Clyde said.

  “Still?” Zach asked.

  “I guess so,” Clyde said. “So talking about it would be a breach of the law we’re out here trying to uphold. Never could abide hypocrisy. Came across far too much of it during my service. At home. Abroad. I’m not saying I’m not occasionally guilty of it myself, but we must strive to be better.”

  “That’s like the complete opposite of Toppley,” Zach said.

  “Not the complete opposite,” Clyde said. “I was talking with her. We’ve a few friends in common. At the edge, where life and death walk hand in hand, right and wrong are hard to tell apart, but you can always tell good from evil.”

  “That’s a—” Tess began, and was cut short by the alarm.

  “They’re about to fire,” Clyde said.

  “We should get inside?” Zach asked.

  “Nah, we’ll be okay out here. You just wouldn’t want to be on shore,” Clyde said.

  The shot was loud, but not nearly as loud as the explosion as the harbour-side fuel tanks detonated in a haze of orange flame.

  “Now that’s what I’m—” Zach began.

  The ground erupted. The shore vanished, replaced by a burning cloud of sand and oil. Dust and flame mushroomed upwards, while a wall of noise and heat shot outward. The ship rocked. Tess dropped to a knee. She could hear yelling, but couldn’t place from whom.

  Clyde pushed Zach inside the water-lock. Tess staggered in after them. With the door closed, she realised the screaming was the ship’s alarm. By the time she reached the bridge, the ship was underway, slowly lumbering northwest, picking up speed, the cameras aimed at the shore.

  “What just happened?” Tess asked.

  “There must have been a fuel store below ground,” Adams said. “A very large one. I’m sure the scientists can calculate the size, but the answer will be in the millions of litres.”

  “That’s why they didn’t bother with a coal power station,” Tess said. “They had all the diesel they needed until they could pump some more of their own.”

  “The main blast triggered a string of tertiary explosions further inland,” Adams said. “These were smaller than that initial blast, but there were at least four, and in an almost straight line. I think that was the tunnel, and it makes me wonder what else was stored down there.”

  “Captain, the fire has spread to the coal bunker,” Lieutenant Renton said.

  “That settles the fate of this place,” Adams said. “The coal will burn for weeks. Nothing usable remains there. The mission has been a success. We’ve destroyed the sisters’ supplies, and what had to be their principal fuel depot in this ocean. Take us north, Lieutenant, and plot us a course for the Panama Canal.”

  5th April

  Chapter 39 - Two Out of Thirty Minutes

  The Caribbean Sea

  Tess pressed the spacebar to pause the video playing on the laptop. To conserve energy, and so fuel, the internal temperature was being kept only a few degrees below outside. And outside, it was a furnace as a weather front followed them west. But inside the cabin shared by the two scientists, with its doors closed for privacy, it was a stuffy oven.

  “This video was shot in New York, two days after the outbreak?” Tess asked.

  “You just watched a zombie die,” Leo said. “My theory is that the pre-infection health of the host correlates with the re-animate’s life expectancy.”

  “A the
ory which is almost completely wrong,” Avalon said.

  “In what respect is it correct?” Tess asked.

  “That from the moment a host is reanimated, the zombie is dying,” Avalon said. “Within six to twelve months, it will become numerically obvious.”

  “Does that mean we’ll start to see it?”

  “Notice it,” Avalon said. “We’ll see it all the time, but how will we know how a corpse died? Thus, we’re calculating a timeframe when anecdotal data will become irrefutable.”

  “There’s no way we’ll get to New York,” Tess said. “After Panama, we’ll return to Dégrad des Cannes, and head back to Robben Island, and then home.”

  “Home for you,” Leo said.

  “Yes, fine, sure,” Tess said. “I want it to be clear that there is no way at all we’ll get to New York. But if we had a sample of that zombie, would you be able to prove they could die?”

  “Why would we need to, when we have that video?” Avalon asked.

  “I mean could you develop some kind of lab test that would produce graphs and charts that we could stick in a newspaper or describe on the radio news?” Tess said. “Something definitive.”

  “Nothing can be definitive,” Avalon said.

  “Leo?”

  “Yes,” he said. “But that’s not what you want, and not why we want to get to that particular specimen. You saw the bodies in Inhambane and Cape Town, and in Colombia. Some would have been zoms which simply died.”

  “Calling them zombies is bad enough,” Avalon said. “Please don’t abbreviate. It’s a short route from there to copying the crew and calling it compound-zom.”

  “Go on, Leo,” Tess said.

  “We can take samples,” Leo said, “but we don’t know what happened to the… to the subject before it died. An intact skull doesn’t preclude brain injury. Weeks of decay turn a diagnosis into a mere hypothesis. In Colombia, the nerve agent could have had an effect of some kind. But here, in New York, we have these three videos. The woman is running. She’s infected. She turns, and then the zombie dies, all within thirty minutes.”

  “Only two minutes of which are on camera,” Tess said. “The rest is conjecture.”

  “The videos are time-stamped,” Leo said.

  “It wouldn’t stand up in court,” Tess said.

  “But it would in the court of public opinion,” Avalon said.

  “Fair dinkum,” Tess said. “But, by now, that corpse has been rotting in that doorway for months. Assuming New York wasn’t nuked or flooded, how reliable would any samples be?”

  “Priceless,” Leo said.

  “I concur,” Avalon said. “It is highly improbable we will find more video footage, or identify a similar subject from any of the footage we’ve gathered. Thus, the only way to find a similar test subject would be to infect people until we replicate that same effect.”

  “We’re not doing that,” Tess said. “And we’re not going to New York. Assuming it hasn’t been destroyed. No, we’re going home.” She closed the laptop-lid and handed it back to Leo. “Where was home for you? Was it New York?”

  “Vancouver,” Avalon said.

  “For two months of the year if we were lucky,” Leo said. “We spent more time travelling than at home.”

  “Vancouver was hit by a bomb,” Tess said. “I’m sorry for your loss, for all you’ve lost. But these videos will have to suffice. It’s a good theory, though. People will want to hear it. Maybe that’s better than proof.”

  “That is never the case,” Avalon said.

  “We’ve got to think of the future,” Tess said. “We came here following a lead given us by Sir Malcolm Baker. A lead that proved reliable. The cartel’s depot was blown up. Considering the size of that explosion, it must have been their central fuel store. For all we know, the lab could have been there. I don’t know if the sisters are still alive, but I don’t see them as a threat to the Pacific. As far I’m concerned, we came out here to find a lab, and we failed. You want to go on to New York, but it is a logistical impossibility. That conversation we had a week ago can be forgotten. When we get back, when you’re asked to make a weapon, what you do and say is entirely up to you.”

  “Any weapon we make would be more potent than VX,” Leo said.

  “I figured as much,” Tess said. “But it’s not my call. You told Oswald Owen you could make one. When we get back, he’ll ask you to manufacture it. You can say no, but that’ll come with consequences.”

  “So would deploying a chemical weapon,” Leo said. “Oceanic radiation levels will continue to rise until they reach a new equilibrium. The aquatic population will boom this year, but crash next year to fifty percent of pre-outbreak levels. It could be as low as ten percent, and continue to drop. Entire eco-systems have already been destroyed, but we could be looking at the utter destruction of the marine environment. This won’t only impact our food stocks, but the oxygen cycle. Half the planet’s O2 comes from plankton, yes? The entire planet could suffocate.”

  “That’s going to happen anyway, right?” Tess said. “So there’s nothing I can do about it. Nothing Canberra can do. What you do and say when we get back to Australia is your affair. Do we understand each other?”

  “We do,” Leo said.

  “Good.” She stood up. “Do you really think they might be dying?”

  “Everything is, from the moment it’s born,” Avalon said.

  “We’re positive,” Leo said.

  “Maybe there’s hope, then,” Tess said.

  A fist thumped into the door, which was thrown open by a sweating Zach.

  “There you are,” Zach said. “You missed the plane!”

  “What plane?” Tess asked.

  Two minutes later she was on the bridge, looking at a still image of an aircraft.

  “A twin-engine jet,” Tess said. “Is that the best picture we have?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” Adams said. “Commander Tusitala thinks it’s a Cessna Citation with a range of around five thousand kilometres. It approached from the east, and was following the South American coast. It didn’t change course when it saw us, nor did it make contact. It must have seen the smoke in Colombia, and then it saw a warship. After which, it turned north.”

  “Was it heading towards Mexico?” Tess asked.

  “Yes, but will they land there, or when beyond radar range, will they change course again?” Adams said. “There are many islands in the Caribbean Sea. Many tax havens. Many runways and many private planes.”

  “So that could be where they came from,” Tess said. “But where were they going? They didn’t respond to a radio call?”

  “It’s the Adventure all over again,” Adams said. “At present, all we can be sure of is that there is at least one working runway, with a fuel supply, somewhere in the Caribbean.”

  6th April

  Chapter 40 - A Ship, a Plan, a Canal: Panama?

  The Panama Canal

  “I wish they’d stop telling us what the radiation levels are,” Zach said.

  “You and me both, mate,” Clyde said. “Have you got a spare mag for your sidearm?”

  “I mean, I wish they’d just say whether a bomb had been dropped nearby or not.”

  Tess found herself looking south, watching the helicopter disappear. Aboard were the two scientists, and Hawker, Oakes, and Commander Tusitala. As far as Tess understood it, while the radiation readings had increased, that was to be expected here, ten kilometres north of Panama, where the Caribbean Sea reached a dead end.

  A quite literal dead end. The surface was littered with unidentifiable flotsam, a floating carpet of wood and plastic which had grown increasingly dense as they neared the isthmus. But that wasn’t why the captain had brought the ship to a halt. Ahead floated a luxury ghost-yacht, dead in the water, its sails furled.

  About fifty metres in length with a white hull, low bridge, aft sundeck, and small pool. Forward of the bridge was enough deck-space to land a helicopter if the mast hadn’t been in the way.
A second mast rose from inside the cockpit. According to the hull, the vessel was the Fortunate Son, and it wasn’t on the list they’d found in Dégrad des Cannes. Though the vessel had engines as well as sails, they were three and a half thousand kilometres from French Guiana, and those sails would have allowed it to travel from anywhere.

  The sails were furled, rather than left to be ripped ragged by the storms, but the only things alive on the ship were the quartet of gulls perched atop the giant masts.

  “Leave the carbine, Zach,” Clyde said. “It’s a small ship with very narrow corridors. Take an extra bag instead.”

  “What for?”

  “Booty,” Clyde said. “This is the Caribbean, mate. Time for you to learn how to be a pirate.”

  Aboard the yacht, as Clyde went below, Tess headed up to the cockpit.

  “Clear,” she said, holstering her sidearm. “Come on in, Zach.”

  “Three captain’s chairs,” Zach said. “That’s cool. They’ve got more screens than the warship.”

  “Look around for a journal or ship’s log,” Tess said.

  “Bet it’s on the computer,” Zach said. “I could try turning them back on.”

  “Rule-eleven,” Tess said. “Never turn something on unless you’re certain you can turn it off. Otherwise we could go shooting off towards Mexico before we find the brake.”

  “Nah, there’s no books here,” Zach said. “Can we go below?”

  She drew a crowbar. “Keep your gun holstered. The interior walls will be thin. Accidentally shooting Clyde would be a seriously bad way to end the day.”

  The spiral staircase led down into a space the same size as the bridge, but with a single flat screen dominating the aft wall. Four armchairs were bolted to the deck, but with additional seating provided by the cushioned bench ringing two walls.

  “Four armchairs down here,” she said. “Not a sofa. But there’s only three chairs on the bridge.”

  “They swivel!” Zach said, falling into one, and giving it a spin. “Cool. But weird.”

  “The ship must be custom built,” Tess said, crossing to the aft doors. “Four seats, I’d say that means a family of four.”