Plague War: Outbreak

by Alister Hodge

  Mark breathed deeply, as he leaned forward on the handle of the sword, its point resting on the wooden side. As his breathing slowed, he hung the blade over the edge to wash the infected tissue away.

  They were safe again for the first time in days, and despite the icy wind, relief flooded through his limbs like a warm bath.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Harry was sitting behind the wheel of his car thinking. He’d pulled into the driveway of the farm house at least fifteen minutes prior, and yet hadn’t moved to go inside; his mind was stuck working through his options. It came down to stay and defend, or run and hope for something better. The problem with running, he couldn’t think of a location that would be safer than the farm. The whole east coast of Australia had escalating outbreaks of infection, and if Melbourne hadn’t been overrun, it was only a matter of time. Major cities were potential death traps – Sydney being the perfect example. The only state free of infection was Tasmania, however, its Premier had enforced a strict ‘turn back’ policy for all boat traffic and closed airports to the mainland.

  On the other hand, if he stayed on the farm, he thought he might have a good chance at avoiding trouble. Milton was a small town, and half of its population had already fled south. This meant that any large density of the Infected would have to come from elsewhere. His house was in free pasture, with clear lines of sight for any approaching danger. He had a guaranteed bore water source, and good soil for crops if the situation became prolonged. And with the landlord’s heavy machinery available, the potential for greater fortifications around the house was also present.

  The hire yard was deserted, a note on the door alluded to an extended holiday and business closure until further notice. In other words, his landlord had fled. As far as Harry was concerned, that placed anything in the hire yard at his disposal. Technically, he wouldn’t be actually removing anything off the owner’s land, just rearranging position. The shipping containers especially caught his attention, if he could work out how to move them, they could be arranged as a fortification around the perimeter of his house making it virtually impregnable.

  Harry sprung the latch to the door and stood from the car, his back creaking as he pushed his hands into the base to stretch. He’d made up his mind; he was going to stay and weather the coming storm. Steph appeared at the top of the steps. She looked somewhat recovered, a decent sleep wiping away the grey smudges beneath her eyes. Her hair was drawn into a neat ponytail at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a t-shirt under a black puffer vest, an old pair of jeans showed her knees through rips in the fabric.

  ‘I was wondering if you were ever going to come in?’ She paused, her forehead creasing in concern at the expression she saw on her cousin’s face. ‘Something happen that I need to know?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve just been debating with myself about what to do. The Emergency Department’s closed and most of the town has fled. I’ve wracked my brain, but I just can’t think of anywhere else that’s going to be safer than our present location. I reckon I have a better chance of making this house defendable than gambling on a retreat to the unknown. I’ve made up my mind ‒ I’m staying, Steph.’

  He looked up, meeting her eyes for the first time. ‘Do you want to join me? God knows I’ll need help making this place the stronghold it’ll need to be.’

  ‘I take it you’ve got some plans on how to make it safer then?’ She turned around, pointing at the knee height windows at the front of the house, ‘With so much glass, it would take mere seconds for a Carrier to smash through.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got a few. If we do this right, those walking corpses won’t even make it to the house. I’ll grab a bit of paper; let me draw out some plans, then you can see if you think my ideas are plausible.’

  Harry left Steph on the door step looking after him. Her face had softened somewhat, an eyebrow slightly raised in curiosity at Harry’s confidence as she turned to follow him inside.

  Steph chewed her bottom lip as she studied the roughly-drawn plan on the table. Harry had scribbled a diagram of the property, including lines of defence that could be created from materials at hand. She was finding it hard to poke holes in his logic so far, the only troubling factor she saw was the lack of manpower to make his vision a reality in a short timeframe.

  Harry had proposed reinforcing the current paddock fences with barbed wire to catch hold of any lone wandering Carrier. If high numbers arrived, the paddock fences would likely fail under combined weight, requiring a closer line of fortification. The house itself was raised six feet off the ground on high footings, circled by a verandah. Removing the stairs at the front and back and replacing them with a ladder, would automatically create another simple barrier against the mindless dead.

  He next proposed laying a defensive square of shipping containers around the perimeter of the house. Harry also suggested digging a series of deep holes inside the fence line. If speakers were rigged in the holes as bait, they could potentially attract many of an attacking swarm away from the house, reducing the overall numbers being fought. Reluctantly, she was impressed.

  ‘I like the idea of the shipping containers, but how are you going to move them up here?’ she asked.

  ‘There’s a truck in the machinery yard that has a crane system on its back for loading and unloading the containers. We just cart them up on the truck, then unload them around the house. I still need to work out how to use the crane system though – that bit I haven’t done before. Surely driving a truck shouldn’t be too different from a manual car?’ he said. ‘Either way, I think we should concentrate first on the simple stuff, like sorting out the existing fence line, and knocking out the steps to the house.’

  ‘Ok. Count me in. Anyway, my parents would disown me if I left you here to die on your own.’

  Harry looked up at her to find Steph’s face was deadpan.

  ‘Glad to take advantage of your sense of family duty,’ he replied with a wry smile at his cousin’s dry humour.

  A crackle of gunfire came over the speakers in the living room, replacing the monotone drawl of the news report Steph had left running on TV. Harry walked towards the other room to investigate.

  ‘Do you know what’s going on?’ he asked.

  Steph got up and followed. ‘They were just covering the evacuation in Sydney. It was all fairly mundane, no more close-ups of people being eaten, thank Christ. Too many complaints I guess....’ Steph’s voice trailed off as she came to Harry’s shoulder and saw the screen.

  Both Harry and Steph gazed at the television, dumbfounded. A news helicopter was relaying footage from the SCG evacuation, hovering at the height of the surrounding stands. A reporter provided a barely coherent overview, so distressed was she at the spectacle unfolding below. The camera swung away to film the grounds around the stadium, displaying a writhing sea of the undead. The insatiable Infected had erased any evidence of the military cordon during an orgy of terror. The camera panned back to the oval, finding a swarm of Carriers descending into the packed oval of evacuees. Even from the chopper’s elevation, the horrendous violence was clear. People were trapped, hemmed in on all sides by the swarm of hungry, dead flesh.

  The camera zoomed in, focusing on a single police officer that stood his ground on the oval. Instead of retreating, he drew his gun and advanced, taking four measured shots at the Infected. The officer then paused, and placed the barrel beneath his chin with eyes closed.

  ‘Poor bastard,’ muttered Harry, realising the man was about to commit suicide.

  Suddenly, the officer opened his eyes and levelled his gun at a Carrier attacking a girl to his left. A headshot dropped the Carrier and the girl ran on. The officer dropped the empty gun and pulled out a hammer, smashing it into skulls of the Infected like a berserker from ages passed. But bravery would not be enough. Within moments, he disappeared from view, pulled beneath a bloody mass of Infected arms and teeth.

  ‘He should have saved that round for himself,’ said Steph, shaking h
er head, eyes sad. ‘The girl had been bitten, she was dead anyway.’

  The news camera changed focus to a transport helicopter that lifted from the crowd, desperate people dangling from its wheels, dropping one by one back to the heaving mass of insanity below. One tiny figure held on grimly, only to finally plummet as the chopper cleared the stands, hurtling to the concrete far below.

  Harry turned off the screen, nauseated. Sydney was lost. He turned to find Steph as pale as he felt.

  ‘Let’s get to work,’ he said. There wasn't much else to say.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Georgie was standing at the wheel, gazing forward over the cabin’s roof as she steered the small yacht towards the bay’s heads and an escape from Sydney. They weren’t by any means alone in choosing this escape route, with hundreds of small boats all heading to sea, the huge bay felt mildly claustrophobic. The sails were still furled against the mast and boom. Georgie planned on using the sail once out of the bay, however, presently used the motor to aid manoeuvrability amongst the throng of other boats.

  A high-pitched whine caused by the air ripping around the wire lines of the mast had eased as the near gale force wind had died down, replaced by a gentle breeze as they’d passed out of the Georges River into Botany Bay. In absence of the driving wind, the small waves decreased in height and lost their white caps. Georgie breathed a sigh of relief; the conditions on the water had her holding down a knot of anxiety regarding her ability to manage the yacht. It had been months since she’d sailed open water outside the heads, and over a year since skippering a craft blind at night. At least with the wind easing, the boat would be less difficult to control, and there would be more of an opportunity to teach Mark and Penny the basics of sailing.

  Mark was perched to her right on the edge of the boat, cleaning his sword with a rag. He’d carefully dried away the water on the blade, belatedly regretting the salt water cleansing after dispatching the undead attacker. Mark now coated the blade in a light slick of oil he’d found in the galley to prevent rust from developing.

  Georgie watched him from the corner of her eye as he worked. It had been the first time she’d ever seen him fight. If she was true to herself, there had always been some concern about what lay deep within him as person, what enabled him to enter conflict zones as a soldier time and again. Mark had always been reticent in discussing his experiences away, preferring to park those memories when at home. Unfortunately, this only prevented Georgie from truly understanding what made him tick. What if he went to experience a warrior’s blood lust and adrenaline of battle? She wasn’t sure if she could stay with someone who viewed the world in such a way.

  However, when Mark had been required to fight earlier, there’d been none of the rage she’d imagined must be implicit to such an act of violence. Rather, he had employed a workman-like economy of movement to dispatch the monster from the side of the boat. She’d seen no excitement on his face afterwards, only relief at its conclusion. This made her feel somewhat guilty that she’d doubted his character, but mostly, it made her feel conflicted over having pushed him away. She’d started detaching herself, becoming more distant than usual before he’d left for his last tour, and during it, she’d barely contacted him. She knew army guys tended to think the worst while they were away, and that her avoidance would have only worried him. Distance didn’t make the heart grow fonder in her experience, just more jealous and suspicious.

  If she was true to himself, she never believed they would have a long-term future together, their backgrounds were too different. Her family wanted for little, enjoying a wealth created by successive generations on the land. And yet, Georgie was keenly aware of her privilege, and it was this awareness that drove her to make the most of the advantages her birth provided. Her parents had instilled a belief that to waste any opportunity presented or earned, was to spit in the eye of luck. She had never shirked a hard decision, and that carried into her private life as well. If she considered a relationship had run its course, she preferred to rip the Band-Aid off, endure the pain and move on. Neither of them had raised the breakup, and considering the new circumstances, she was happy to let that conversation wait.

  Happy again with the condition of his weapon, Mark slid the blade home into its sheath and moved next to Georgie. Resting a hand lightly on her hip in an unconscious caress, he appeared oblivious of the scrutiny he’d been under moments before.

  Mark looked off to the left of the bow, across to the deep port on the north-eastern shore of the bay. The container ship terminal had been named as one of the evacuation points from Sydney, and a throng of humanity could be seen lining the dock. As Georgie headed for the bay’s exit, she’d been forced within a few hundred metres of the port, where multiple ships could be seen loading passengers. Numerous smaller boats were taking part, brave locals using their own small fishing crafts to ferry people back and forth out to large container ships anchored in the bay. A fight had broken out on one of these smaller boats, as the passengers turned on their rescuer to steal the boat. Georgie and Mark looked helplessly on as the captain was dumped overboard. As he tried to climb back on board, one of the men callously chopped down on his hands with a wide bladed knife, severing the fingers to drop like fat little worms as the man screamed and fell back into the water. The captain had been heavily dressed for the cold weather, and the weight of his sodden clothes took him below the surface within moments.

  Eighty metres to starboard towered the Armonda cruise liner, requisitioned by the government to aid evacuation efforts. It had been loaded earlier in the morning, crammed full of Sydney’s fleeing citizens. Unfortunately, numerous brewing infections had passed security unnoticed. Muted screams fluctuated in volume with the breeze. Smoke trailed from broken windows at one location. At the lowest deck on the stern of the ship, a mass of people gathered as they sought to escape the slaughter within. People started to jump the twenty odd metres to the water below. As the attacking dead hit the crowd, those jumping became a waterfall of flesh, desperate to avoid being torn apart.

  ‘Mark, don’t even think it,’ said Georgie. ‘You saw what happened to that captain, that could be us if we pull them aboard, our boat would be swamped in seconds. And how will we know if they’ve already been bitten or not?’

  ‘I know. You’re right, it doesn’t stop it from being fucked up though. Let’s just get out of here.’

  From that moment until they escaped the heads of the bay, the couple stared resolutely ahead, trying to block the screams and cries for aid around them. They passed more than one boat that had become a floating slaughterhouses, decks splashed with crimson. Sharp, triangular fins started to cut the water with surprising regularity as bull sharks were driven to frenzy by the sheer volume of blood mingling in the waves, adding to the horror for those luckless bastards who had been forced to jump overboard.

  The bow of the yacht bucked upward into a one-metre swell as they rounded the Kurnell headland and headed south. Under instruction, Mark cranked the main sail up the mast. With a massive smack, a gust of wind filled the canvas, tipping the boat slightly to port as the yacht sprang forward eagerly. Neither looked backwards, taking no pride in their actions of self-preservation.

  Some things were better left in the past.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Georgie had made the most of the remaining hours of light, forcing a crash course in sailing on Mark in the hours after leaving Sydney. She was being pragmatic, there was no way that she would be able to captain the boat through the entire trip, and would need spells away from the wheel. In the end they had both been relieved for the distraction as he learnt first how to manage the sail.

  Georgie then taught him how to turn the boat’s direction by tacking. When he had this manoeuvre sorted, she showed him how to jibe, a more dangerous method of turning the boat. Although Georgie instructed him to keep down, the speed at which the metal boom holding the base of the sail swung mere inches above his head made him wince.

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sp; Cronulla, Sydney’s southernmost coastal suburb slipped by in the distance, giving way to the greenery of the Royal National Park as Mark enjoyed his first stint behind the wheel. The southerly continued to blow steadily into the evening, requiring him to make frequent small turns of the bow across the wind to maintain their progress down the coast. Although they had GPS, Georgie elected to keep the coast within sight, a decision Mark was more than happy to support.

  As the light faded, Georgie took back control of the wheel. Four hours of sailing brought their yacht within reach of Wollongong; however, the port city was almost unrecognisable at night. The electricity had failed, leaving most suburbs in an impenetrable darkness. A low layer of cloud blocked the moon above, while reflecting a blood-red glow upon the city centre where a massive fire burnt out of control. Thick plumes of dirty grey smoke billowed upwards from the inferno, while smaller fires burnt holes in the pitch black across the city.

  Wollongong had descended into the chaos seen so shortly before in its northern neighbour. Mark groaned silently, they’d find no safe harbour there. Georgie caught his gaze and shrugged at the thoughts blatantly obvious on his face.

  ‘So we keep on going, what does it matter? If the wind continues being kind to us, we’ll make it to Shellharbour in another hour or so. I know a small marina there where we can anchor safely.’

  ‘Ok, it’s not like we have a choice anyway,’ grumbled Mark as he turned away from the destruction to look out at sea. ‘Can’t say I’ve become used to sailing at night though.’

  Georgie snorted a short laugh. ‘What, you can manage a couple of tours of duty, but you’re scared of the dark? Give me a break.’