Plague War: Outbreak

by Alister Hodge

  ‘I want to see how big their wings are. Make the bats stretch them out,’ demanded the woman of the ranger.

  The Ranger looked caught off guard. He gently explained how the bats usually slept through the day, and that he didn’t want to disturb them further. At his refusal, the woman decided to act herself, giving the table a sharp kick to rattle the cage.

  It was enough to collapse the trestle table legs at her end. Both cages slid to the side, smashing onto the brick pavers. The bats were terrified, frantically clawing at the wire to escape. The ranger quickly grabbed each cage in turn, placing them right way up on the ground, anxious to prevent the bats from harm.

  As he grabbed the smaller bat’s cage, the fox-headed creature latched onto his index finger, inflicting a vicious bite. He swore under his breath, jerking his fingers back. A small jet of blood squirted from the wound before he clamped pressure onto it with his thumb, the teeth having severed a small artery. A representative from the resort obtained a first aid kit and wrapped a bandage around the wound while the ranger grimaced in discomfort. Steph looked around to see what had happened to the woman who’d caused the whole incident – but the bitch had quietly left without even an apology.

  The presentation was evidently over. Both bats had settled down after the ranger placed canvas covers gingerly over their cages.

  ‘Those bats weren’t infected, were they?’ Steph asked, concerned for the Ranger.

  ‘No, they’re part of a control group. I’ll still be stuck with a course of bloody antibiotics anyway,’ he replied, frowning.

  During the previous five minutes, the Ranger had broken into sweat and the skin on his hand above the bandaged finger was turning a light shade of red.

  ‘Are you sure you’re ok?’ asked Steph. ‘You’re not looking so good.’

  ‘I’ve had a sore throat the last week, probably just the flu. My head’s started to bang though,’ he said, massaging his temples.

  ‘Talk to the staff at reception; they should have something for the headache. Maybe they would let you crash in staff quarters for a while until the pain killers kick in?’ Steph suggested.

  ‘Yeah, might be a good idea.’

  He declined her offer to help move the cages back to his truck, so she left him to it and returned to her room for an afternoon nap.

  Steph had been on the road for five months since leaving London. Starting in New Delhi, she had spent four months exploring India, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam and Laos before landing in Perth. During the past four weeks, Steph had touched base with the main tourist attractions in Western Australia and Northern Territory before taking a small connecting flight to Cairns, beginning a journey down the east coast of Australia.

  It had been her first experience of travelling, a trip she’d dreamt of completing since being a teenager, however, there had always been some reason to put it off. First, it was university, and then a career and relationship. At the start of the year, however, her boyfriend had dumped her unexpectedly. Turns out, he had been dating a colleague on the sly for months and she hadn’t noticed a thing. Or, more accurately, she’d decided not to read anything into the frequent late nights at work, or the times he supposedly crashed at a mate’s place after a boys’ night out. It was the wake-up call she needed to take her life back. She had stayed an extra month until her lease expired, then packed her belongings into storage, resigned from work and hit the road. The freedom she had now, to be able to go wherever she wanted with only a backpack for company, was something that she’d find hard to explain to her old self.

  Steph pulled her blond hair into a ponytail, kicked her thongs off and lay back on the bed to flip through a dog-eared copy of the Australian Lonely Planet guide. A light breeze caused by the circling ceiling fan played with the hair of her fringe as she read. Within minutes, the book dropped from limp fingers as she fell asleep.

  Chapter Four

  Penny’s stomach growled. Her lunch had been delayed indefinitely when the job came through. As a police officer stationed at Kogarah, Penny had drawn the mundane duty of preventing unauthorized media access to the Federal Quarantine facility. Overnight, police had chaperoned a patient transfer, and the media had got wind of the story. A series of rumours had circulated amongst police that morning about the events at Randwick Emergency.

  The stories ranged from the absurd ‒ new rabies virus turns patient into crazed killer; to the hilarious ‒ dead patient rises again, attacks co-workers and ignores gunshot wounds like mosquito bites.

  Her colleagues were obviously bored and trying to outdo each other, but then again, it made for a good laugh compared to the real-life depressing situations they usually dealt with.

  Penny and one other officer were standing outside the main gate to the quarantine facility, feeling rather redundant. The security surrounding the place seemed extreme for what was essentially still just a medical facility. A three-metre chain-link fence topped with barbed wire separated the quarantine grounds from the public, each stretch of fence under the surveillance of CCTV cameras. The main entrance was a reinforced metal sliding gate, from which a driveway proceeded thirty metres to terminate in front of the only building on site.

  The three-storey structure with a flat roof, was constructed of drab, fawn-coloured brick. Small rectangles of tinted glass dotted the upper-most part of each floor, giving the appearance of cell-block windows. Although they allowed natural light within, they provided a view of nothing but sky to the inhabitants.

  The building’s foyer was similarly comprised of dark tinted glass, preventing outside sight into even this inconsequential area. With such measures taken, Penny saw little risk that the media would gain access to any information that wasn’t first volunteered by quarantine management, or leaked by an employee – neither of which necessitated her kicking her feet at the front gate, bored brainless.

  A rumble of an approaching truck engine drew her attention as a camouflage-painted troop carrier rounded the street corner. As the truck drew near, it began to gear down before swinging into the driveway and halting. A detachment of ten soldiers spilled out of the back, each in battle fatigues with webbing and rifle in hand. A soldier with Lieutenant insignia on his shoulder approached her.

  ‘You in charge here?’ he asked.

  Penny glanced at her partner who just shrugged in reply.

  ‘Yeah, you can talk to me. What’s going on?’ she asked. The officer ignored her question, instead handing her a sheet of paper from his shirt pocket.

  ‘We’ve been ordered to take over security at this facility. Police command have been notified.’

  Penny gave the paperwork a brief scan, not giving it much credence. She handed the paper back, the officer roughly folded it and replaced it in his pocket.

  ‘Give me a sec, yeah?’ Penny indicated to her partner to remain at the gate while she radioed in to verify the information. Interestingly, the Lieutenant’s story held true. Kogarah station confirmed receipt of the order only minutes prior. She hooked her radio back onto her vest and walked back to her partner.

  ‘It checks out. We’re off.’

  The detachment of soldiers continued as if the pair of them had already left. The Lieutenant was at a communication box at the side of the gate speaking to someone inside. As he stepped away, the gate began to move, sliding with a squeal of oil-starved metal. Two soldiers peeled off from the group, remaining outside the gate where Penny and her partner had been standing. The rest of the group walked up the driveway, the truck following slowly behind. As the truck cleared the gateway, it shut once more.

  She stood and watched as the truck parked and the soldiers entered the foyer into the building, disappearing from sight. She sighed; at least now she could maybe get some lunch finally. Penny climbed into the front passenger seat, her partner stuck with the driving responsibilities for this shift. In the distance, an intermittent sequence of popping sounds escalated in intensity before stopping abruptly.

  Was that a scream?

>   She looked at her partner. ‘Tell me you heard that as well? What the hell are they shooting at? It’s a quarantine centre, not a bloody war zone.’

  Penny grabbed the door handle to get out again when the radio came alive.

  ‘All units return to base. Multiple occasions of violent assault reported. Riot squad response being formulated, further instructions to follow at station.’

  Penny snatched the mike off the dashboard. ‘This is car SG 112, we’ve heard shots fired at the Quarantine Centre, request permission to delay our return to investigate. Over.’

  ‘Car SG 112, that’s a negative. Quarantine is the army’s responsibility – return to base immediately.’

  Penny affirmed that they had received the order, jaw clenched in frustration as she signed off. Her partner switched on the lights and siren, wheels squealing as he stamped on the accelerator.

  Penny looked over her shoulder at the receding quarantine facility, her stomach clenching slightly. Was there some truth to the rumours about the Randwick ED virus and homicide? If the army was already involved, maybe it was some sort of terrorist attack. She caught her train of thought and shut it down, no point worrying about unlikely scenarios, she’d find out soon enough back at the station.

  Penny pulled out her mobile and sent her husband a quick text, asking him to pick up their son from afterschool care and then stay at home until more news came through – it looked like there was going to be some mandatory overtime this evening.

  Chapter Five

  Harry exited the airport tunnel and crossed the Cooks River bridge onto General Holmes drive. He was making good time. The roads were more empty than usual, which was fine by him. To his left, the waters of Botany Bay were an angry grey as a southerly whipped the surface into white caps.

  He’d been brainstorming a possible cause for the events of the previous night, and the only answer that got past the first base of interrogation was infection. His original patient had been bitten by something before boarding her flight from Queensland. A typical biological response to an overwhelming infection had followed before she had died.

  And then re-animated.

  But had she come back to life? There had been no bleeding when she ripped her own arm off. Had the virus somehow reprogrammed how the cells were working, making the body a mere vessel to continue virus transmission from host to host? The patient had bitten Kate; however, the injury’s severity had prevented the escalation of infection symptoms to the point of death. Kate had bled out instead – a much quicker route to the same end point. But there had been a bite, and the virus had been transmitted, leading to the same eventual outcome of reanimation and violence.

  If he was somewhere near the truth, then the virus was extremely quick acting, and with each infected person attacking anyone within reach, the rate of spread through the community could outrun a wild fire. In his experience with Ebola, it had been hard enough to treat infected people when they were only scared of dying. How the hell was he to treat an infected person while they were actively trying to kill him?

  As his mind leapt forward to the worst-case scenarios, his thoughts leant towards ongoing survival. He’d need to stockpile food before the supermarkets closed – any wide-reaching quarantine would bring general trade to a standstill. What tools were at the farm? He’d need a basic set on the property to make it liveable in isolation for any length of time. Harry flipped his indicator, turning right onto Presidents Avenue. From memory, there was a Bunning’s Hardware store and supermarket at Rockdale.

  At the supermarket, he filled his trolley with an assorted range of canned goods, both vegetable and meat, and anything that looked non-perishable. He grabbed a few four-litre bottles of water for good measure, unsure whether the farm had a working bore. From the fishing section at Big W next door, he found a sheathed bait knife and machete. At the hardware store he stocked up on a few essentials: hatchet, axe, pinch bar, spade, hammer, battery packs, torch, wrench and screwdriver set, and two jerry cans for fuel. By the end of it, he’d filled the back of his Pathfinder.

  His next stop was the petrol station. He hauled the jerry cans out and filled them to brimming along with the car’s tank. Luckily, the Pathfinder had some external attachment points for the jerry cans, so he wouldn’t have to get high on the fumes all the way down the coast. At the counter, his eyes were drawn to the cigarettes behind the attendant. Whenever he went on an overseas contract, he inevitably picked up a smoking habit again. Being conscious of his own health was something he only seemed to worry about when he was in his own country.

  ‘The petrol at pump six, thanks.’

  ‘Would you like anything else with that, Mars Bars are two for one with a petrol purchase,’ said that greasy-bearded attendant, spouting an obligatory sales pitch.

  Ah, fuck it. ‘Yeah, give me a twenty-pack of Styvo’s and a lighter. Stressful day an all...’ Harry tailed off.

  He didn’t know why he was making excuses to the guy behind the counter; it’s not like he’d bloody care what Harry was breathing into his lungs. Harry shoved the smokes and lighter in his pocket and ditched the receipt on the way back to his car.

  In the driver’s seat once again, he pulled out a smoke and lit up. His car was facing in the direction of the city centre. He waved the smoke towards the window, and then realized the haze wasn’t of his own making. At least three different streams of grey smoke rose above the suburbs ahead; there were some major fires ongoing.

  He turned on the engine, and caught the end of a news broadcast. People were being urged to stay at home, with multiple riots across the city. The broadcaster was unsure of the cause or origin of the violence, but reports were of multiple deaths and assaults.

  Harry pulled out onto the road with the newscast continuing in the background. He’d made the right choice to up and leave this afternoon, Sydney looked like it was in for a rough couple of weeks.

  Chapter Six

  Penny filed into the station’s conference room amidst a crowd of other police officers. The atmosphere was strangely muted, with this many officers in one place, the noise would usually be deafening. Penny had heard multiple stories being swapped in the cafeteria while awaiting the meeting, and if even a tenth of them were true, this was going to be like nothing they’d ever faced. The few quiet conversations still in progress died off to silence as the Superintendent walked to the front.

  ‘I’m sure most of you have heard rumours of atrocities committed in the last few hours, some of you may have even been involved in trying to stop them. We have experienced an unprecedented level of violence on the streets, people attacking each other and, unbelievably,’ he paused, a look of revulsion twisting his mouth, ‘cannibalism has been observed. I can assure you, that we will succeed in confronting and stopping this threat to public safety. It will be the toughest, and possibly most dangerous job that we’ve faced in recent times.’ He paused and leant to plug a USB key into the computer at the podium, opening a video file.

  ‘The quickest way to illustrate what we are up against is a video of a police engagement that took place in Newtown only an hour ago. Without seeing it for myself, I wouldn’t have believed it possible.’

  The video was from the squad car camera of two constables from Newtown station. The footage clicked into life as one of the constables exited the vehicle and approached two men huddled over a body on the ground twenty metres away. A muted challenge was heard from the officer as he approached, demanding the two men stand and place their hands behind their heads. At the noise, one of the men slowly stood and turned to face the constable. A crimson slick covered his mouth, chin and neck. Dried, black blood coated one side of his face and shirt, a flap of tissue and skin hung from his right temple in a palm width slab, obscuring the eye and ear on that side. His skin was deathly white where it showed through the gore. The man began to move towards the cop, lurching forward unsteadily, like a 3am drunk.

  The policeman drew his Taser, ordering the man to stop and lie on the
ground. There was no response from the approaching figure other than an animalistic snarl. The officer fired the Taser pins into the man’s chest without effect. The distance between the two rapidly diminished, only four metres now separated them. The cop drew his Glock, again demanding surrender. The killer’s hand reached for the officer as he fired three rapid shots into his chest – centre mass.

  The impact of the bullets caused the man to stagger one step back; but that was all. He started forward again. The police officer now retreated slowly, continuing to fire, emptying his magazine. Many of the bullets flew wide of their mark as fear overtook his aim.

  The policeman’s partner could be seen entering the scene from the side of frame as the killer grabbed hold of one hand and wrenched the constable into a savage embrace, locking teeth onto his face and ripping free the cop’s upper lip and nose. The policeman screamed, battering with both hands at his assailant, but it had all the effect of a child against a giant.

  The killer pulled the police officer to the ground, ripping into his neck while one free hand stabbed forward, up and under his tactical vest, fingers pressing through the skin of the abdomen like a crude knifepoint. The policeman’s eyes bulged in agony and the body convulsed as he was eviscerated.

  The other police officer could be seen emptying a magazine into the killer’s back without effect as it feasted upon his partner. The officer on the ground was no longer moving, now mercifully silent. Whether by blood loss or a stray bullet, at least his suffering had stopped. The partner, realising failure, ran back towards the car. The view of the officer on the ground, with his killer hunched over, rapidly shrunk on the screen as the squad car reversed at speed. The screen went black as the Superintendent stopped the video.

  The room was silent for three heartbeats before a wall of noise rose as the audience demanded information, clearly disturbed by what they had witnessed. The Superintendent held up his hands for silence.