Plague War: Pandemic

by Alister Hodge

  ‘Jesus... I can’t believe it’s still alive after all this time,’ said the officer as he holstered his pistol and moved toward the child.

  ‘Sir, I wouldn’t do that. No child survives for a month on air,’ said Nate.

  ‘It must have had food and water locked in with it. The poor thing’s emaciated.’

  The officer leant down and picked the child up, bringing it to his shoulder. He reached up a hand and brushed away the hair from its face.

  Suddenly the child darted forward, locking tiny sharp teeth about the officer’s index finger. He cried out in pain, dropping the body to the floor in surprise. The child retained its grip on his finger, madly shaking its head from side to side as the teeth were driven deeper. In desperation, the officer wrenched his hand to the left, sending the child flying into the kitchen wall with a crash.

  He looked down at his hand; the finger was gone, torn away at the first joint. Rhythmic spurts of crimson jetted from the severed digital arteries of his finger. The officer jammed his other hand over the wound, clamping down to stop the haemorrhage.

  The child lurched to its feet. Hair still partially covered its face, but no longer in a fuzzed-up bird’s nest. The brown locks were plastered to the right cheek with blood, covering one eye. The other remained fixed on the officer while it crunched through his finger which was still sticking out its mouth. The child stretched its neck back, then gagged down the digit like a bird swallowing a large worm. Throat now clear, it opened its mouth and screamed, a cry of pure rage that froze the officer, leaving him rooted to the ground, immobile.

  Mark darted from the stairwell, shoved his pistol against the child’s head and pulled the trigger. The scream was abruptly cut off as the body crumpled to the ground, inert. Nate and the officer stared at Mark, aghast at his intervention.

  ‘The kid was infected – you know as well as I do a bullet’s the only treatment,’ said Mark. He pointed to the front of the building. ‘We’ve got to get going. The streets packed out there, and they’re heading our way.’

  Steps thundered down the staircase. Vinh paused at the doorway as he noticed the small body on the floor. ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘I thought it was an abandoned child,’ said the officer. ‘I was wrong,’ he added, holding up his hand.

  Vinh winced as he viewed the ragged stump. Everyone in the room knew what the injury meant. He was dead, it was only a matter of time until he succumbed to the virus and became another recruit to the hordes of Infected.

  A crash sounded from the front of the building. Nate spun around, looking toward the front door. The window next to the entrance imploded, a Carrier falling through the frame. It got to its knees, a snarl issuing from its mouth as it looked up at the soldiers in the kitchen.

  ‘Make for the beach at the double. I’ll radio for pickup en route. If I turn into one of those bastards – take me out,’ said the officer.

  As the creature rose to standing in the front hall, the men ran for the back door, jumping off the porch onto the grass in their haste to be gone. A maddening growl of rage emanated from the main street, issued from a thousand mouths as the milling crowd transformed into a swarm of rabid monstrosities.

  Vinh hauled himself over the back fence, the structure shuddering under the bodies of the rest of his squad. Inadvertently, he looked backward before he dropped to the other side. Down either side of the building came a stream of the Infected. Vinh’s eye was drawn to the first in line, a Carrier that had been an elderly man, naked except for a filth encrusted pair of underpants. A garden stake poked from his obese gut, waggling obscenely with each step. Vinh dropped to the ground, gladly removing the sight from his vision. Almost immediately, hammer-fisted blows of the Carriers rocked the fence. Boards started to splinter as the soldiers sprinted past the next house for the park.

  While the squad had been inside, the storm front had arrived. As they ran through the park, gusting wind transformed the foliage of the trees to thrashing life, branches writhing like the limbs of a tortured animal in the gale. Nate and Vinh crashed through the coastal scrub as they hit the sand dunes at the far side of the park. Rough sand particles thrown by the wind needled their faces as the men emerged onto the shore.

  There would be no escape this way. The choppy water of a few hours prior, had been transformed by the oncoming storm into a beach of dangerous surf.

  ‘Looks like they fucked up that weather forecast, Sir,’ spat Nate.

  The officer ignored him and unclipped his radio from his webbing.

  ‘We need an alternative location for pick up. The beach’s a mess, there’s no way a boat can get in safely. What’s your recommendation?’ The officer pressed the receiver up against his ear to listen to the reply from command over the howling wind. He nodded on hearing his order. ‘Will do, we’ll be ready for extraction on the pier within ten minutes. Out.’

  ‘What’s the plan, Sir?’ asked Vinh.

  The officer was looking rough. His face was red and fat beads of sweat rolled down from his forehead, only to be ripped away by the wind. He lifted his hand and pointed down the beach to the north. ‘We make for the pier. They’re sending a Seahawk to pick you guys up.’

  ‘All of us, don’t you mean, Sir?’ Vinh asked.

  ‘I’m bitten. We can’t afford the risk of infection aboard the main ship, so I’ll be covering the withdrawal. The pier makes sense; we only have to hold a ten-metre span while waiting for the chopper.’

  The snarling rage of the approaching swarm could now be heard over the wind. They were getting close.

  ‘We need to go before they cut us off. Move!’ shouted the officer.

  The men launched into a sprint along the beach. The first Carriers emerged from the scrub above where they had been, tumbling down the dune in their haste to reach the warm flesh of the Marines. Within moments the beach was packed from water’s edge to the scrub line, as the Infected trailed fifty metres behind the small group of soldiers.

  Vinh and Nate were in the lead of the small squad. Coming to the base of the pier, they shoved their rifles through the railings onto the wooden slats, then clambered over the top of the low barrier. They reached down to help pull their mates over the edge. Nate glanced to the shore and felt hair rise on the back of his neck. The start of the pier was no longer empty but teeming with pallid ghouls heading their way from the park beyond.

  The squad thundered across the springing slats toward the end of the pier. A long weatherboard building covered the pier for roughly thirty metres before opening to the air once more. Spray was lifted off the waves below and flung in their faces as they reached the end of the structure. Turning around once more, they faced the oncoming mob of Infected.

  ‘Fix bayonets!’ roared the officer. Metal rasped as each soldier pulled a wickedly sharp knife free to fix on the end of their rifle. ‘Make your shots count, remember, nothing but the head will stop these bastards.’

  The officer took a knee and aimed at the front-runners of the attacking horde. ‘Shoot at will!’ he shouted.

  The squad formed a line behind him, taking side on shooting stances and opened fire. The noise was deafening with so many rifles firing in close confines, stunning eardrums to a high-pitched tinnitus whine. Carriers filled the ten-metre width of the pier, jostling against each other in their eagerness to attack. As rifles fired, the front line of Carriers fell to a person. The Infected directly behind tripped over the bodies, sprawling on the wooden slats. The marksmanship of the soldiers was supreme, shot after bloody shot smashing skull and brains. But still they lost ground. Slowly, the Carriers advanced through sheer weight of numbers, crawling over the carcasses of the fallen, oblivious to the torn and mangled bodies beneath as their hands slipped in entrails and mushed brain.

  The sound of chopper blades gained Vinh’s attention. A grey Seahawk was skimming across the foaming waves to their position. They had less than forty metres of the pier free of Carriers and would have to risk advancing closer to give
it room to land. The officer evidently realised the same thing, waving the line forward and advancing to within fifteen metres of the enemy.

  The blades of the chopper buffeted their backs as it landed on the end of the pier, the structure groaning under the weight of the huge machine. The officer waved his men back, and two by two they turned and ran for the doors of the helicopter until the Lieutenant was left on his own. With the decrease in opposition, the Infected quickly gained ground, advancing as the chopper lifted off.

  The officer fell back while keeping a continuous rate of fire. The Seahawk hovered to the left of the pier, and the pilot now directed the helicopter’s machine gun onto the swarm. Wood splintered from the hand railings, exploding as large rounds punched through and onward to the bodies of the Infected, mowing them down like wheat before a blade in an attempt to protect the Lieutenant.

  The officer’s magazine ran dry, forcing him to change weapons. He let the rifle drop to his side, hanging by its sling as he drew his service pistol. He continued to fire as his back bumped up against the final barrier. He’d run out of room to retreat. Hands reached hungrily for him, chipped and blood-stained teeth snapped as rancid breath gusted into his face from the corpses, now within arm’s reach.

  His pistol clicked dully on an empty chamber.

  The officer pulled back up his rifle, shoving the bayonet forward into the torso of a Carrier. The blade jammed, caught between two ribs, stealing the use of his last weapon. He was engulfed by the Infected. One of the ghouls clamped an iron bracelet of fingers about his wrist, jerking him forward into a savage embrace. His other arm was wrenched out by another Carrier, pulling the wrist into its mouth. He screamed as the pack of mindless dead gouged meat from his body in countless locations.

  ‘You can’t let him die like that!’ yelled Vinh.

  The chopper pilot clenched his jaw and swept the machine gun towards the officer, punching holes of crimson through his chest and blasting the Carriers from his body. The Lieutenant slumped to the ground, dead. Most of the Infected surrounding were only temporarily stopped by the passage of bullets. They now dragged torn bodies back to the officer, intent on continuing their feast.

  Seeing that the officer was no longer moving, the pilot turned his craft away and headed back to the Frigate, the pier and Queenscliff receding behind them as they sped over the waters of Port Phillip Bay.

  Vinh slumped backward against the wall of the cabin, looking blankly ahead. He had escaped, but it was only a momentary reprieve. The main invasion force would land within a fortnight, and he’d be counted within its numbers.

  Mark nudged his ankle with his foot, distracting him from his depressive thoughts. Vinh looked up, his mind still reeling at what he’d seen.

  ‘That your first contact with the plague?’ asked Mark.

  Vinh nodded, unable to form any words.

  ‘I know it doesn’t seem it, but we did ok back there. Ten men into a town of thousands? I didn’t think we’d be coming back,’ Mark said, his face weary.

  Vinh turned away. He wasn’t in any state to start looking for silver linings just yet.

  Chapter Two

  ‘It’s just not fair, Jai,’ said Erin, irritably tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Why do I have to go all the way to King Island? Surely they can let me stay here?’

  Jai and his sister were alone in one of the evacuee dorms at Jindabyne. Six bunks were crammed into the room, leaving barely a shoulder’s width between each set. The two siblings sat on the bottom of one bed, backs against a wall with knees drawn to their chests.

  ‘It’s a good thing, though isn’t it? I mean you’ll be safe there, and it’s only temporary. You’ll be moved to Tasmania before you know it – and that’s the only state free of the infection. It’s what we have fought for,’ said Jai.

  ‘Not if only one of us is going! They’re treating me like a kid and not giving me any choice at all. What happened to the cadet program the recruitment lady talked about? She said I’d have the chance to train, that I’d be important for the fight in the future.’

  ‘I don’t know; they mustn’t have it set up yet.’

  ‘Well how come they’re letting you stay? You’re not old enough to join the army either,’ said Erin in frustration.

  Jai took a slow breath. He was determined not to fight with his sister right before saying goodbye. For all he knew, this might be the last time they’d see each other in person.

  ‘On the paperwork I’m eighteen. Old enough to fight.’

  ‘But you’re not, you’re sixteen,’ said Erin, protesting.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m as tall and strong as half the men enlisting. They don’t care how old I am, as long as I’m willing and able to fight – they’ll take me.’

  ‘Well, it’s still not fair,’ Erin said, grim resignation setting in finally. ‘I’m nearly thirteen. With everything we’ve had to do so far, I’m not a child anymore.’

  ‘No, you’re my sister, and I’m going to miss you like all hell,’ said Jai, putting his arm around her shoulders and giving her a hug.

  The door to the room grated against the floorboards as it swung open. Steph poked her head around the corner, then spotted them in the far corner. ‘Hey, are you two coming to breakfast? Everyone’s waiting.’

  Jai gave his sister another quick squeeze, then shoved forward off the bed.

  ‘Yeah. I’m bloody starving,’ he answered as he turned back, offering Erin a hand to stand up with. She sighed, then accepted the gesture and allowed herself to be pulled upright. Steph held open the door for them as the two teenagers filed through into the hallway.

  ***

  Harry was leaning against a wall, waiting for them outside the evacuee cafeteria.

  ‘Come on guys, the smells coming through that door have been torturing me!’ he said.

  Steph just grinned and pushed open the door. ‘Nobody’s stopping you. Feel free to go in and stuff your face.’

  Harry just grunted and followed Steph and the kids in. The group joined the line-up to the kitchen. The room was warm, with electric heaters hanging from the walls in various locations above long trestle tables. At the end of the room was a stainless-steel serving area, where kitchen staff ladled food onto waiting plates. The group filed past in turn, mouths watering as scrambled egg, bacon, mushrooms and toast was portioned out.

  They found an empty stretch of seats at one of the long tables and sat together. Conversation was abandoned as each filled their mouths, revelling in the taste of the fresh food after the previous month’s rations of canned crap.

  Harry finished first, virtually inhaling the food on his plate. He got up and returned with a round of coffees, strong and black. Slouching back in his chair, he cradled his cup in two hands and blew at the surface gently, steam curling away from his lips.

  ‘Have you heard anything more about where Mark got sent?’ he asked.

  The group had been debriefed the day after arriving, their individual stories recorded and examined for information that could help fight against the Infected. Mark had been deployed mere hours after his interview, barely getting a chance to say goodbye to the group.

  ‘Nothing concrete,’ Steph said. ‘Some sort of frontline operation.’

  ‘I’ve been given a deployment notice myself, they’re sending me to Victoria later this morning.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Jai.

  ‘Hasn’t been a lot of detail thrown my way,’ said Harry, ‘but, from what I’ve heard, there’s an invasion force entering a town called Queenscliff, trying to get a foothold there before taking on the main target – Geelong.’

  ‘What’s so important about Geelong?’ asked Steph.

  ‘Makes sense as a location I guess, it’s got a deep port and is directly across Bass Strait from Tasmania. There’s been large-scale car manufacturing there by Ford until recently. When it shut down, the site owners managed to win a military contract to build armoured personnel carriers. I’d bet that’s what
the army’s after, the production of large numbers of those vehicles will be critical for a land war against the Infected. If they alter the troop-carrying section, they’d be like a moving fortress, allowing soldiers to cull those walking bastards from relative safety,’ said Harry.

  ‘How come you’re not doing a training camp, Harry?’ asked Steph. ‘Jai and I are locked into a couple of weeks here under some Full Metal Jacket wannabe.’

  ‘I let slip about my background in emergency medicine during the debrief. Once they heard my work history, they transferred me to the medical corps. They’ve got bugger all medical backup, so I’ll be following behind the troops fixing up what I can. I still haven’t heard what they plan to do with soldiers bitten by Carriers though.’

  ‘It’s the army, Harry. They’ll be ruthless to prevent avoidable attacks behind the line. Kind of changes the dynamic of ‘no-one left behind’ though, when you’re only being returned to be euthanized,’ said Steph.

  ‘Ah, well. I guess we’ll find out soon enough,’ sighed Harry. ‘What about you, Erin? I hear you’re being evacuated to Tasmania – that’s awesome news.’

  Erin looked up at the mention of her name, her bottom lip trembling like she was about to cry. ‘No, it’s not! I don’t know anyone there and I’m leaving you all behind where you might still get hurt. And anyway, I got told last night that Tasmania’s still too scared that we might bring the plague, so we’re getting sent to King Island in Bass Strait for quarantine.’

  ‘Well at least it can’t be any colder than here,’ said Steph as she gave Erin’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. A weak smile flickered on Erin’s face. She was a tough kid, and Harry knew she was doing her best to keep it together.