Else nodded, looking over her shoulder. She seemed concerned that I had chosen now to stop running.
‘What about the train?’ she said.
‘Pimba,’ I replied waving a hand at the sign behind us. ‘Woomera,’ I waved in the other direction. ‘Walking, maybe take us an hour to get there.’
‘That means it’ll take them about an hour too,’ Else said and set off up the road. I followed her. The sun pounded down on us, through the swirling dust clouds it sucked the moisture out of my skin and mouth until even my eyes felt like they were filled with grit.
‘Slow down Else, you’ll get heat-stroke,’
She turned without breaking her stride, said something I didn’t catch, took two steps backwards and then collapsed.
I didn’t scream, didn’t have the wind for it. But my throat choked up and I whined. A shrill sound of shock. Else wasn’t moving. I fell beside her, pulling her up into my lap, cradling her head and feeling for a pulse. It was there, but felt weird.
‘C’mon Else, c’mon girl. Just a little further.’ Her eyes were half open, the tiny delta of blood vessels across them had turned grey and her breathing was a shallow wheeze.
I didn’t cry, there was no water left for tears. Instead I picked her up, carrying her in my arms like a child. I had never carried anyone this way before. The last thing you did was hold someone near death close to you. She was a complete dead-weight but I didn’t care. Together we were going to finish this journey, and if she died and turned then she could take me too. I’d had enough.
I stumbled on up the road in the dust and the wind. My lungs burned with a deep fire fuelled by the ache in my arms and legs. Black spots danced in front of my eyes, clouds of grit and shimmering visions of silver flickered. With a roaring sound a deformed figure came up behind us, emerging out of the dust storm. Grey faced, with large black eyes, blank and alien. Its face was featureless, except for a bag-like jaw. I stumbled, my legs said fuck it, and I fell down. From my knees I watched the creature become a man wearing round, tinted goggles with a cloth wrapped around his face. Behind him an old white pick-up emerged from the dust cloud. I heard other voices, guns were waved around, and then hands were lifting Else, carrying her away from me. I croaked and struggled, but they lifted me too. Laying us down in the back of the truck, we were covered with a tarpaulin and the wind cracked the heavy plastic like a whip.
CHAPTER 24
The wind driven dust swirled like a reddish sea fog and they kept the tarp over us as we hurtled up the road towards Woomera. I quit struggling when a boot pressed down on my chest, and a gruff voice told me to lie still or they would toss me out. We skidded to a halt a few minutes later and I could hear the wind and the moans of the dead. Even out here, even in the place that I had finally allowed myself to believe might be a sanctuary, the dead still ruled. The boot lifted and I shuffled backwards. Pulling myself up into a sitting position, I took stock.
Three people, wrapped in ragged, dust shielding cloth and carrying M16 automatic rifles stood staring into the desert. I stood up, leaning against the back window of the truck’s cab. I saw a familiar scene - the grey pulsating mass of a couple of hundred zombies clawing at the fences and barricades of an island of humanity.
One of our captors turned around and, field glasses hanging from his neck, walked back to the pick-up and lifted a dust-stained water-bag from the front grille.
‘Thirsty?’ his accent was American.
I nodded, and took the bag. The water tasted dirty, but it was wet. I drank more than my share and gasped for breath when I lowered the bag.
The other two observing the mob at the fence ahead of us came trotting back through the swirling dust storm.
‘The signal light is flashing, let’s go!’ They piled back on board and the driver gunned the engine, sending us racing up the trail as the road ahead dissolved under the shifting sand. The mad-man behind the wheel kept us on the hard packed dirt, or the remains of the asphalt under the drifting grit.
I couldn’t see shit, my eyes gumming shut from dust. A plume of orange flame erupted ahead of us. I flinched and ducked. Staring forward through the windshield I could see gouts of flame pouring down from sentry towers along the fence line. Long pipe flame-throwers vomited thick burning oil down over the zombies crowding the fence. The blazing flow immolated the dead, they hissed and sizzled, skin crackling, their eyeballs swelling until they burst.
At the end of the road heavy armoured gates with dozer blades scraping the ground shuddered to life and began to open.
I saw a moment later that the gates were bulldozers, a pair of them, with welded plates armouring the driver’s seat. In a lumbering ballet they turned outwards in a synchronised fashion, each one pushing corpses back as the racing truck bore down on the slowly widening gap between the two gates.
At breakneck speed a tire blew on the pick-up; the truck leapt like a dolphin and we twisted in the air. I fell hard, sliding in the loose sand as the vehicle crashed down, crushing the cab like a tin can. I crawled to my feet. Else lay face down in the dust on the other side of the track. Evols stumbled away from the fiery onslaught and a man with half his face burned away shuffled towards her.
‘Hey, arsehole!’ I ran towards the zombie, waving my hands. He moaned and lurched, trying to see me through eyes that had melted down his face like ice-cream. I snatched up a rock as I ran and slammed it into the evol’s face. With a wet, crunching sound he went down. I followed the dead man to the ground, hitting him until his skull was squashed. The driver had been killed in the crash, the other two were thrown clear. One staggered to his feet as I gathered Else up. ‘Hey!’ I yelled. ‘Help me here!’ He turned and stumbled towards us.
Evols were being ground to paste under the dozer tracks, some losing limbs and thrashing and reaching up from the ground, open mouthed and moaning. Fire sprayed out from the gate towers, burning more zombies and adding to the chaos. I stood with Else in my arms and the rock in my hand ready to fight off the dead. Over the roar of burning oil and crackling of burning flesh I could hear the shouts of those inside the fence. Through the black and swirling smoke men in faded khaki fatigues ran out to the wreck. They wore a mix of gas masks, grime-stained bandanas across their faces, goggles and sunglasses over their eyes, all favoured a buzz-cut hair style.
With military precision the squad of seven fanned out. Four men dropped to one knee and covered the other three. Rifles came up and a steady smattering of gunshots rang out.
The man coming towards us off the back of the pick-up reached up and yanked his cloth mask away. His mouth split open in a yawning moan. Blood, already turning black, drooled from his mouth. Behind those dark goggles his eyes would be clouding up and his brain was focusing on the new hunger that would drive him on until it was destroyed. I let Else slide to the ground at my feet and stepped over her still form. I swung my rock at the dead man’s head. The zombie’s arm came up and caught my fist. I twisted free and punched an uppercut to his jaw, my off hand so it barely staggered him. Groaning, he smashed his hands down on my shoulders, knocking me off my feet and coming down on top of me. The sudden weight pushed the wind out of my lungs with a grunt. Thick drool dripped down as his jaws opened wide. The remaining air in his lungs vibrated out of his throat in a gurgling moan. I punched and fought. Tearing his goggles off and gouging out an eye that was still warm and soft with my thumb. The new zombie didn’t care. He pressed down, his teeth clacking, snapping at my face. Then something hit him from behind. His good eye rolled up in his head and I pushed him aside.
The first of the soldiers to reach me aimed his automatic rifle again. ‘Are you bit?’ he yelled from a safe distance, his voice strongly American.
‘No!’ I yelled back, rolling to my feet I pulled up my shirt, turning around to him take a good hard look. ‘Neither is she!’
He nodded and waved the two men behind him forward. They lifted Else and we started back towards the opening between the dozers. I ran with them.
As we ran past, the leader patted each of the four man team providing covering fire on the head, and each in turn rose and jogged after us. We passed between the two dozers; they ground the gears into reverse and pulled back. Coughing and choking on the thick black smoke Gasping for breath I dropped to the ground inside the compound, Else was dumped beside me.
Our noise and movement attracted the dead and a thickening crowd of them came on through the smoke. The bulldozer on the left stopped moving. I stood up, yelling myself hoarse. The soldiers opened up with a volley of headshots that dropped the first six zombies with pin-point accuracy. I ran at the machine. It was open at the back and protected at the front by a heavy steel plate, brown with rust and gore, welded to the chassis. The driver was muttering and working the starter. I clambered up behind him and snatched his M16 from its holster next to the driver’s seat.
‘Get out of here!’ he yelled, his accent also American. I flicked the safety off and squeezed the trigger. A female zombie’s skull exploded. A dead man with a dark cavity under his ribs where his gut used to sit lurched at us out of the smoke. The driver yelled and kicked out at gutless, who grabbed his boot and bit hard into his calf, growling and savaging it like a dog with a bone. The driver’s voice rose to a scream as I fired again, tearing a chunk of bone and brains out of the top of the zombie’s head. The rest of the soldiers reached us and we fired until the gap between the bulldozers filled with the broken corpses of the dead and the rifle in my hands clicked empty.
‘Fall back! Close the second gate!’ the squad leader barked his orders and the men moved quickly, dragging the wounded driver out of his seat and pushing me back with them. We abandoned the stalled dozer and they swung a high mesh gate across the empty space and sealed it with a heavy chain and padlock.
The squad leader tore the gasmask from his face and turned to the dozer driver who lay at my feet, his wound bleeding into the dirt.
A week’s blonde stubble, tinged with grey, framed the soldier’s cold blue eyes. ‘Why has my secure perimeter been compromised?’
The driver grimaced. ‘It just died on me! It’s been running like shit for weeks!’
The soldier standing over him spat a wad of yellow phlegm into the dust. ‘I do not need your fucking excuses. If you had not fucked up you would still be alive!’
The bulldozer driver’s face, already grey with the blood loss, went white with shock. The squad leader stepped forward and shoved me aside. Drawing a pistol from his hip he fired once, blowing the wounded man’s brains across the ground. No one said a word.
Silence fell over the team. The flamethrowers shut down in their towers and now three more men, each black-faced with burnt oil, joined the group. The only sound was the moaning of the crowd outside the fence and the creak of the mesh being constantly tested.
As the smoke cleared I got a better look at my surroundings. The village of Woomera was littered with the rusting hulks of vehicles. Rockets and missiles of various shapes and sizes creaked in the wind on corroding metal stands. Decade’s worth of space and military junk, recovered from where they’d crashed in the desert and painted in their original livery, now scoured back to bare steel by wind and sand. The wrecks showed the way things used to be, when men were still masters of the world. Still able to challenge the heavens and blow shit up for the sheer hell of it. In the background a grove of tall, white shafted windmills, each topped with two massive blades stood in the red sand, barely visible through the wind-blown dust and smoke.
I stepped around the body and checked on Else. She barely stirred when I lifted her head into my lap. The squad leader gave orders and the two men lifted the driver and dumped him by the fence. They made no effort to bury him.
‘She needs a doctor!’ I yelled. The squad leader spat into the dust again.
‘Jenks, Madden, put them through decom and alert the fucking geeks.’
Two soldiers slouched forward, slinging their rifles onto their shoulders. I staggered up, Else limp in my arms.
‘This way,’ they also spoke with American accents, muffled by the gas-masks they both wore.
I carried Else and they lead us to a concrete block building with a steel door. A faded sign said USAF/RAAF PROJECT LIBERTY. One of our escorts pushed a code into a keypad and the door clicked open. He vanished inside. I went in, manoeuvring Else past the steel door frame, and the second soldier followed, closing the door behind us.
The interior reminded me of a hospital, the same creamy green colour scheme, the easy to clean cement walls and linoleum floor that was starting to show cracks.
‘What happened to your woman?’ The leading soldier asked.
‘She’s sick. Not bit, just sick.’
‘Well you came to the right place. We got a shit load of doctors around here.’
‘This is Woomera?’
‘Indeed it is. Combined USAF and Australian air force operations centre. The current seat of US military operations in Australia. Sergeant Thad Arbuckle commanding.’ We walked into a tiled shower room off the corridor. The first soldier gestured for me to stand against the wall. He unhooked a fire-hose and the sudden gush of cold water knocked me off my feet. I couldn’t hear the next command over the roar of the water filling my ears.
‘Strip!’ he bellowed again and I pulled at my sodden shirt with numb fingers. They shut the water off and stepped over us, undoing pants, boots and reducing us to bare flesh in seconds, before turning the hose on again.
I covered Else, afraid she would drown in the deluge. She coughed a few times and groaned without opening her eyes. When it was over they lifted their gas masks off and clipped them onto their belts.
‘Damn Jenks,’ one of them grinned. ‘That’s a fine piece of tail you’ve got there mister.’
‘Don’t touch her, you’ll regret it,’ I felt numb with cold and bruised from the assault of water.
‘You don’t look like you’ve got the balls to stop us man.’ Jenks didn’t look old enough to shave. I wondered how he came to be here working as a US soldier. If that’s what they actually were.
‘Not me,’ I shook the water out of my ears and lifted Else as I got to my feet. ‘She on the other hand will kill you with her bare hands if you touch her.’
They laughed at that, no surprise. Else lay in my arms shivering like a child with a high-fever. Madden picked up the Japanese sword that Else had carried all this time and unsheathed it a few inches. ‘Wow, this is really cool,’ he said and shoved the scabbard into his belt.
‘I’ll need that back,’ I said, my eyes steady on his.
The soldier shrugged. ‘Sure, maybe when I’m done with it.’
‘Move out,’ Jenks pointed with his M16 and I carried Else, naked and dripping, out into the empty corridor. We walked down to a set of doors that hissed and puffed high-pressure air when they were unlocked with a keypad code. Behind the doors, a lift and another keypad needing a code. Finally we started to descend. I realised I stood under an electric light, something I hadn’t seen since the Opera House.
By the time the lift stopped, my arms ached with the strain of holding Else. We stepped out into more bright lights and a security station, with television monitors and another soldier watching from behind thick glass.
‘Got two walk-ins,’ Madden said to the glass window. The soldier on the other side nodded in acknowledgement and with a buzzing sound a door clicked open. Jenks and Madden nudged me forward with their gun butts. I found myself in a room that could have been an office. Worn carpet and plastic pot plants joined furniture that could have been fashionable thirty years ago. Soft music flowed from hidden speakers in the ceiling and I stood dumbfounded until Madden opened a door into a room no bigger than a closet.
‘There’s a gown in there,’ he said. ‘Put it on.
We’ll get a gurney for the lady.’
I gently lay Else down on the carpeted floor. Stepping into the closet I slipped into something less comfortable; a paper-thin cotton hospital gown in a wrap around style.
When I emerged they had Else on a hospital stretcher under a thin sheet. An Indian looking guy in a white coat stood bending over her, shining a light into her eyes.
‘She’s sick, you have to help her.’ I took Else’s hand and it felt painfully cold.
‘A remarkable specimen, where did you find her?’ The Indian straightened up and regarded me with genuine interest.
‘Sydney,’ I said.
‘You came all the way out here from Sydney? I must commend you sir, quite the hazardous journey.’
‘You need anything else from us, Doctor Singh?’ Jenks looked bored now that Else was covered with a sheet.
‘No, no, return to your posts.’ the white coated Indian waved my escort away with barely a glance.
‘You’re a geek? Her name is Else, she’s Tankbread, but she’s smart Tankbread you know?’
‘Fascinating,’ Doctor Singh seized the end of the gurney and pushed it out of the room, I hurried along beside him and we entered another corridor. The piped music played on until Singh swiped a card over a door panel and lead me into a room with beds.
‘Donna, come and see this,’ Singh called to another white coat. This geek had a pale complexion, and an attractive face backed by dark hair tied back in a braided pony tail. She strode down the ward, sliding a pair of glasses into her coat pocket as she came.
‘Walk-ins?’ She asked, regarding me curiously.
‘Indeed, and he claims the girl is a clone.’
She seemed surprised. ‘Where the hell did they come from?’
‘He says Sydney.’ Singh didn’t seem convinced either.
‘It’s true,’ I announced. ‘Her name is Else, I got her out of the Sydney Opera house… about a month ago.’
‘A month?’ That peaked Donna’s interest and she bent over Else, peeling her eyes back and staring into them.
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