‘I’m pleased to report that we’ve been relatively successful in clearing the small towns between here and Geelong of the plague. But, I can see from each of your faces, you’ve come to the same conclusion as me. The numbers we’re up against once we hit the main town are just too large for our forces,’ said Black. ‘As such, I have pointedly refused the federal government’s request to commit my troops until we have a battle that can be won. And I’m here tonight, to say that day has come!’
What had been a sombre mood until moments before, now felt electric. Mark leant forward in his seat. They were going into battle despite the odds? Mark felt his muscles tense, his hands resting on his lap were curled into tight fists as he awaited Black’s next words.
‘The Prime Minister has finally seen reason and is allowing certain suburbs to be sacrificed. The technique we’ve applied so successfully in the smaller towns will now be used against Geelong. We will be dropping sound attractants in different locations to draw in swarms of the Infected, and then burn them to the ground with American MK77 incendiary bombs. If all goes to plan, our troops should be only mopping up the dregs.’
‘But sir, what if the fires spread? We could lose half the city to flames!’ said a Major.
General Black looked at the man with disgust. ‘You think I give two shits about destroying empty houses if it means our mission will be a success? As long as I have the manufacturing plant up and running at the end, the rest of the damned city can burn to the ground for all I care.’
The Major looked away, ears burning red at the public reprimand.
‘But unfortunately, the government thinks like you, Major. So, to minimise the loss of property, we have acquired two helicopters with fire-fighting capability. The Prime Minister thinks they’ll be used to control the spread of fire outside the nominated kill zones, however, my number one priority for them will be to ensure the routes chosen for soldiers to enter the town are kept clear of flames.’ The General paused, as if considering how to frame his next words.
‘The first part of the plan will commence tomorrow morning with the dropping of the noise attractants, then the sites will be bombed in the afternoon. I’ll give it a day and a half to burn out, then we move the trucks in.’ Black turned to the side and waved his aide forward to the table. Mark had failed to notice the General’s man standing quietly in the shadows of the room. The aide stepped forward and began handing a map to each of the Lieutenants who commanded a platoon. Mark glanced down at the paper in his hand. A red line was marked along a main road, leading straight to the town’s centre.
‘Each of you will find on the map in your hands, the route your troops will take through the city,’ said Black. ‘Unfortunately, some of the trucks may end up facing higher numbers than others. Those soldiers heading to the shopping precinct of Ryrie and Moorabool St. in the town centre will no doubt have plenty of targets to keep them occupied,’ he said with the stone dry humour of a veteran.
Mark glanced at the street name under his highlighted route and winced. He’d scored Ryrie Street for his platoon, a road heading straight to the rabid heart of the town.
‘Start your preparations. There will be fifteen soldiers to a truck, so make your choices wisely as to who you combine as a team,’ said Black by way of ending the meeting.
‘Lieutenant Collins,’ said Black, making Mark look up sharply at his name. The General waited until the other officers had left the room. ‘I need a path carved from dead flesh through this city, and your road’s going to be deeper than most. Efforts will be made to draw the worst of the numbers to the bay side where they’ll be bombed, but I dare say more than a few will be left behind to keep you busy. I’ve also gained word of a possible group of survivors holed up in the Westfield shopping mall. Active communication was maintained until last fortnight when their radio went dead. If you feel it’s safe to leave the trucks, I want you to investigate and retrieve anyone you find – but it is not a high priority, common sense says they stopped talking due to being overrun.’
‘Is there anything else, Sir?’ said Mark, thinking that he was being dismissed.
‘Yeah. Try and avoid getting bitten on this operation, next time you might find the area more difficult to cut off,’ said Black. ‘I need live officers. Dead ones just give me more bastards to fight.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Jeremy lay on his back staring at the ceiling in the medical clinic, visually tracing small cracks in the plaster to distract himself from his new companion’s moaning. The wound in his thigh had healed well, and aside from some residual weakness in the muscle, it felt back to normal. The lack of permanent injury had done nothing, however, to dissipate his rage at being jailed. His anger burnt white hot, and was focused upon just two people: Lieutenant Bourke and the girl, Erin. He would no longer be happy with just ending their lives. No, not only did he want them to suffer, he needed them to feel terror and pure helplessness in their final moments before he snuffed out their lives. He was determined to regain the control he once had and was willing to wait until his opportunity came.
The doctor’s chair leg screeched on the concrete as he shoved it back to stand. In Jeremy’s peripheral vision, he watched him check the lock on the clinic door before walking down a short corridor towards the toilet. For the first time since the other prisoner’s arrival, they were alone in the room. Jeremy turned his head to appraise the usefulness of his cellmate. His lip raised in a sneer as he watched the other man snivel and mumble to himself. The survivalist’s bald scalp was raw, scattered with small blisters, taut with serous fluid.
‘If we’re going to share a room, you better grow a set and stop your fucking crying. I’ve never heard a grown man complain so much about a smidge of sunburn,’ muttered Jeremy.
Calvin shut up like he’d been slapped. He looked defeated; any bravado he’d asserted earlier in the day had leaked away with the fluid from his burns.
‘What am I supposed to do? You heard them earlier, for all I know I’ll be hanging from a rafter come week’s end,’ he said. ‘And it sounds like you’ve done worse; so, if I’m executed, you’ll be strung up next to me, eyes bulging and shit filling your pants as you strangle.’
‘Oh please, give it a break, Drama Queen. The difference between me and you, is that I have no intention of letting that happen.’
‘But you’ve swallowed razor blades, that sounds like you’re just doing their job for them.’
‘The razor blade was a big fat lie,’ said Jeremy, as if explaining the real world to a child. ‘Even the doctor was smart enough to work that one out. He knows I’m not suicidal, I just needed to get out of the cells. Much easier to escape from a medical clinic than a barred cage.’
Calvin’s eyes opened wider in realisation.
‘The light bulb finally switched on did it?’ said Jeremy, chuckling at his expression. ‘That’s right, I’m breaking out of this shit hole. All I’m waiting for is a time when the guards are distracted. The army has to branch out of this backwater eventually, and when they do, I’ll make the most of their diverted attention.’
‘You seem to be forgetting we’re hand cuffed to a bedframe,’ said the survivalist. ‘If I had my bolt cutters from back home, it’d be no problem, but I don’t see any lying around here begging to be used.’
‘And they were calling you a ‘survivalist’? Have you even looked at what the cuff’s attached to?’ said Jeremy, sitting up and swinging his legs to hang over the edge. He lifted up the mattress to expose the metal frame. ‘These are the same snap assembly construction used in most army barracks. We don’t need bolt cutters, just common sense.’ With that, Jeremy undid the join in the bedframe, allowing the attached side of the handcuff to fall into free air.
Calvin jerked to sitting and fumbled at the side of his own bed, searching for the join in the metal. When he went to free his own cuff, Jeremy pulled him up short.
‘Now’s not the time though,’ he said, slipping his cuff back into place and re-
joining the bedframe. From down the hallway, the sound of a toilet flushing heralded the imminent return of the doctor. Jeremy fixed the other man with a hard glare. ‘Are you wanting to join me when I go, because if you are – you have to agree to do as I say, when I say it?’
Calvin nodded avidly, like a dog ecstatic at finding a new master. Jeremy grinned, white teeth flashing in a shark’s smile.
‘Good, because once we get out of here, I think you’re going to love the game I’m waiting to play.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Doug was in a foul mood as he typed his code into the research centre’s security panel.
‘Feeding bloody dogs, what a frigging joke. If only the government would come through on the primates we need,’ he muttered under his breath.
The light above the door flashed green as the electronic lock released. Doug pressed the heel of his palm into the barrier, shoving it wide enough to admit his weedy frame. Excited barking met his ears, partially muted by the intervening door to the caged area. He tried to ignore the sound along with the knowledge it was he who drove them to distraction, a violent excitement at the proximity of live flesh, as they attacked their cage walls in an attempt to break free and eat him alive. He knew he wasn’t special in any way, the dogs did it when any human came within sniffing distance.
First Doug went into the laboratory to check on the batch of samples from earlier in the day. He swore silently on noting an error signal flashing on the machine. On pulling out the samples to check what had gone wrong, he found the blood had turned into a glutinous mass of clot despite the anti-coagulant he’d added. Something had changed recently. Each sample he’d taken from the dogs over the past week had turned out the same way, alluding to a new mutation in the disease that he was yet to pin down.
He began emptying each of the vials into a clinical waste container, clots breaking free of the test tubes with each frustrated flick of his wrist against the yellow plastic. Finally empty, he placed the used tubes into the sink for washing later, deciding it would be a good job for his new assistant, Harry, in the morning. The thought brought the first smile of the day to his sour facade as he closed the door to the lab and walked to the dog cages.
On the way, he stepped into the kitchen and pulled a plastic bag filled with dead rabbits from the fridge. Doug placed one hand under the bag to support its weight, his nose wrinkling in disgust at the feeling of the animals, stiff with rigor mortis against his hand. He walked carefully, determined to avoid getting any of the blood from the carcasses on his clothes. With his elbow, Doug hit the button to release the door’s lock, stepped through and let it slam behind him as he took two paces toward the cages.
Doug froze. The hairs stood up on the back of his neck as he realised something was different – the dogs were silent. Rabbits now forgotten, he let the bag fall from his hand as he quickly scanned the cages before him. Each dog was at the front of their pen, eyes focused on him, lips pulled back in a silent snarl as they crouched on the ground. It didn’t make sense – they were never quiet when anyone was near. As his eyes made it to the last pen, his heart stuttered. The steel wire at the base of this cage was bent upwards, a fifty-centimetre hole big enough for a dog to squeeze through.
A deep growl sounded from behind him. Doug spun around looking for the source of the noise, and locked eyes with a huge male Rottweiler. Blood ran from long rents in the fur over its head, carved from its hide as it had forced the sharp wire up off its cage. The blood had mixed with frothed saliva, and now hung in glutinous carmine strings from its jaws. Lips were pulled up in a vicious snarl, exposing inch long canines. Warmth flooded Doug’s thigh as his bladder released, his balls shrivelled and clenched to his gut in terror. He edged backward, one small step at a time while the animal watched him. The dog remained still, body stiff as it watched him, and Doug had a fleeting hope that he might make the exit. He took another slow step and suddenly the spell was broken. The dog lunged forward as the rest of the animals started barking madly and jumping at their cage fronts.
Doug turned and reached for the door release, a low wail of terror on his lips. Thirty kilos of pure muscle smashed into his back as the dog leaped, jaws driving needle sharp teeth into either side of his neck. His body was driven forward against the wall beside the door, head smashing the break-glass fire alarm. White-hot pain arced into his brain as a glass shard punctured his eye, mixing with the agony from his neck. On activation of the fire alarm, all doors in the building sprung open, including those to each dog cage.
Freed of their captivity, the beasts launched an attack, descending as a pack on Doug. The Rottweiler dragged his body back into the middle of the floor where it released its grip on his neck. With his one remaining eye, Doug looked up at the massive animal standing over him. The dog snarled once more then lunged down, ripping at his face as the other animals joined their pack leader, burying fangs to take their share of flesh.
Chapter Thirty
Jai slowly walked in the grey light of dawn, then stopped to blow warmth into his cupped hands. The days were improving as summer took hold, but the nights were still cold enough to chill his bones. He’d scored yet another night of sentry duty along the fence line protecting Queenscliff. Up ahead, a few men from his detachment had broken protocol to build a small fire, preferring to warm their hands in lieu of patrolling the barrier. Their laziness pissed him off, but as Corporal Nate was one of the men at the fire’s edge, he’d been powerless to act.
Jai turned away from the fire and started walking in the other direction. Although day was fast approaching, he didn’t want the fire’s light to rob him of his night vision in the pre-dawn haze. He stopped and cocked his head to the side for a moment. He could have sworn he’d heard something in the undergrowth. There it was again – but it was coming from his side of the barrier. There was no fear of Infected coming from the town, the peninsula having been scoured of the plague. He let out a sigh and walked onwards thinking one of the guys must have walked into the scrub to take a dump.
‘Hey Jai, do you want a hot brew? Kev’s managed to rig up a billy of coffee,’ said Nate in a hushed voice from behind. Jai turned at the offer, seeing one of the guys place a blackened can onto the fire’s coals. A hot drink at this time of morning was hard to resist. The battle of conscience only took a second before he gave in and started toward the fire to claim one of the tin mugs on offer.
Out of the scrub behind the men streaked a shadow, a low growl the only noise as it launched itself into the middle of the group. Harsh barking sounded, drawing Jai’s eye in time to see the rest of the dog pack emerge from the dark. The soldier holding the billycan was knocked backwards into the fire, screaming as his bare neck hit the glowing coals, smashing embers in all directions. The huge dog on his chest lunged down and ripped out his throat with one savage bite, swallowing the cartilage of his trachea. The soldier’s heels kicked a staccato in the dust as his breath bubbled obscenely from the gaping hole of his neck, blood spurting to sizzle in the fire beneath.
Jai lifted his rifle and fired off a quick shot into the animal, catching it through the belly. The dog howled in pain and bolted. The fence provided little obstacle to the canine who merely squeezed under the bottom length of wire, leaving tufts of fur behind on the sharp barbs. Nate had drawn his handgun, firing multiple rounds into the pack swarming around them. The other dogs followed the first, straight under the fence and into the scrub on the far side.
Three men were down. Kevin, the soldier that had fallen in the fire, lay still, eyes empty of life as his uniform began to smoke and catch light. Jai grabbed one foot and dragged him free of the embers. Nate leant over one of the men on the ground, a ragged gouge ripped from his thigh. Another soldier cradled a mangled hand, three fingers torn away, his jaw clamped tight against the pain.
Nate turned to Jai, face tense with shock at the unexpected attack. ‘Get the rest of the crew and guard the line in case they come back for a second go.’ He then unclipped the co
mmunications radio from his shirt and contacted the Fort. ‘I need urgent medical assistance. We have three men down; one fatal,’ he said with a grimace, looking at the smoking body to his left.
***
A hammering on the door of the medical clinic woke the three men inside. Grey light filtered through the windows of the clinic as the doctor stumbled from his bed, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as he opened the door. An agitated Private was standing on the step outside.
‘Doc, we need you to grab your stuff. There’s been an attack with two soldiers wounded,’ he said.
The last vestiges of sleep evaporated from the doctor’s face at the news, replaced by a grim expression. ‘Plague related?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so, there was something mentioned about a dog attack. These injuries might actually be survivable for a change, Sir.’
The doctor nodded and left the man at the step while he quickly retrieved a medic backpack from the rear of the clinic. As he returned to the door, he looked at the two prisoners on their beds.
‘What about those two, who’s supposed to guard them?’
‘They’re handcuffed to the bed frames, Doc. I don’t see them getting far dragging those things.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘Being a bloody prison warden wasn’t part of the job description anyway.’ The door slammed behind them, then a key jingled in the mechanism to lock the clinic.
As the footsteps receded behind the door, Jeremy sat bolt upright in bed.
Plague War: Pandemic Page 21
