“Maybe it was, for a while,” Geoff said. “Not any more, by the looks of things. So we’re going to go out, recon the town, and if it’s safe… well, if it’s safe, and if it looks like that storm might be bad, we can move on into the town.”
Geoff, of course, meant “safe” very differently from Mrs Rotherham. Safe means deserted. Abandoned. Derelict. No zombies and no people. What a sad state of affairs, when that’s your definition of “safe.”
“And then we can come back out to the ship,” Declan said. Not a question. A statement of fact.
“Sure,” Geoff said. “We’ll need to find fuel, but sure.”
He didn’t really believe that, I could tell. He thought this was the end of the line, but didn’t want to say so. It was like back in Eucla – the split between people who thought we should stay put and people who wanted to decamp to the ship. Even now, after all this blood and death, that tension was still there.
I’m up on deck now, looking out towards Kingscote again. Geoff and Colin and the others are running the numbers down below, figuring out the best course of action – how many people, how many guns? Safety first, of course, always - but it all feels a bit odd. We’re only a few kays offshore from Kingscote and I can already tell that nothing is moving except the wind in the trees. No people, and no zombies either. It’s a ghost town.
May 31
The recon team was a careful balancing act. We needed enough people to be a formidable force, but not so many that the Maersk was left undefended. In any case we only had two boats left, the Eucla tinnies. We’d hauled them up onto deck with the little gantry crane when the Maersk was underway, but the Mundrabilla boat was too big and heavy and so we’d settled for leaving it tied up alongside the hull as the container ship drifted east. When the seas had picked up this morning it had been battered against the hull too much and something in it had crumpled and now it was half-drowned in the water, trailing at the end of its line like a beaten dog. Reparable, maybe, but not any time soon. So we had the two Eucla fishing tinnies, which limited us to about a dozen people tops.
In the end we took eight, four per boat. Me, Matt, Geoff, Anthony, Len, Simon, Jonas and Alan. Geoff had the M4, Jonas and Anthony the Steyr Augs. Simon and Alan had their own personal rifles they’d been using for years – Simon his high-powered bolt-action Winchester, Alan the semi-automatic Remington he’d buried out the back of his farm after the ’96 amnesty. Len had a SPAS shotgun which I think someone had brought from a police depot in the South West – someone who’d later died in the unexpected zombie attack on Eucla. What had his name been? Danny, or Desmond, or something? I’m sure I did sentry duty with him once…
Guns are strange, when you think about them. I’d never touched a gun in my life last year; now I strap this Glock to my thigh every day. And they change hands. They travel. The stories they could tell. Even now, looking across at Geoff sitting by the tiller with a stern look on his face and the wind in his shaggy hair and our only M4 slung across his back – was that Varley’s M4? Did Varley have a preferred rifle, or did he rotate them? He’d been carrying one of them, I knew that, the night he was gunned down in a bed of crinkled dry seaweed on Eucla’s beach. An M4 that was certainly in the hands of one of the Mundrabillans now. Thinking of that gun I felt a pang of frustrated loss – more than I had for Varley himself, after what he pulled with Colin.
Anyway, that was the pick of the litter. Me and Matt had to make do with handguns. I still have the Glock we took from that zombie cop in the forest south of Collie; Matt, in Eucla’s chaotic and jumbled survivor stockpile of the last month, has settled on an Army-issue Browning Hi Power. More guns, more histories.
But that was it. Two little tinnies with eight survivors and handful of guns, motoring into a port on an unknown island. We may have been well armed, we may have been experienced, we may have been ready. But we were also very far out of our sphere of experience. We were in an entirely new state. We were almost a thousand kilometres from Eucla. And – I’d checked the charts before we left – we were just over a hundred kilometres away from Adelaide, a city of over a million people, and the fifth largest in the country. The next one down the list from Perth, in fact, and I could very much remember what a blood-soaked horror show that had been.
Okay. So if I was a terrified civilian in Adelaide, jumping in my car, I’d probably hit the highway and head for the Outback. I wouldn’t head for Kangaroo Island, because I’d need a boat. But still. Kangaroo Island had been a safe zone for quite a while. How many boats? How many boats in Port Adelaide, how many boats in the suburban marinas? How many boats along the great sweep of the coast, from Ceduna to Portland? How many boats in Streaky Bay and Port Lincoln and Port Augusta and Victor Harbor? And the hundreds of other tiny little villages in between? Smoky Bay, Perlubie, Elliston, Wallaroo, Tunkalilla, Cape Jaffa, Robe…
I’d been staring at those fucking charts too long.
We cruised slowly into Kingscote harbour, Jonas’ boat taking the lead, pulling up to the piddly little ferry wharf that stuck out into the bay like a skeletal finger. It was the only port facility of any kind; the idea that we might have docked the Maersk here seemed laughable now. We tied up at the end beside a HARBOUR CLOSED sign swinging in the wind; there was a second sign plastered across a noticeboard, something about quarantine and restriction and the suspension of ferry services, but the wind and the rain had long since stripped it away to illegibility.
“There’s nothing fucking here,” Simon said, pulling the collar of his jacket up against the wind and hefting his rifle. “This was for ferries. We’re not going to find fuel for a fucking cargo ship. This is it.”
“Better make ourselves at home, then,” Geoff said. “Let’s get moving.”
We headed down the wharf and into the town itself. Dark clouds were thickening along the western horizon, in contrast to the lighter grey clouds above us. A strong breeze was whipping up whitecaps in the bay. There was a flagpole by the edge of the esplanade, the cords twanging against the aluminium, loud and repetitive. The Australian flag at the top had long since been torn off and blown away.
The wharf had been empty but as we moved into Kingscote we saw our first signs of the historical chaos. Police tape, overturned traffic cones, faded and weathered posters about curfews and martial law. Storefronts had been smashed open and the contents stripped away. There were bodies scattered around the place; just bundles of rags, flashes of white bone, picked away by vermin.
Lightning flickered in the storm clouds to the west. We heard a distant rumble of thunder.
We came to what passed for the town’s main intersection. In fact, we smelt it before we saw it. There were hundreds of corpses here – thousands, maybe. They were scattered around a loose barricade across the intersection, on all four sides. A fire engine, a military personnel carrier, a police four-wheel drive and a rubbish truck. The rubbish truck had FLEURIEU REGIONAL WASTE AUTHORITY painted on the side in a cheerful blue and green logo, which was splattered with blood. So was the rest of the truck, and all the other vehicles. And the road. And the buildings around it. Not fresh blood, not at all – dark and brown and stained. Enough blood that however much rain had passed through in the last month or two hadn’t been enough to wash away the underlying stains.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” I said. I’ve been through a lot, I’ve seen a lot, but the carnage there still made me feel nauseous.
“Don’t be a baby,” Matt murmured, though he looked ill himself. “Come on.”
We followed the others, picking our way carefully through the bodies. Nothing was moving. Inside the barricade there were only one or two corpses. What drew my attention was that the road there was coloured gold.
That was disconcerting. Until I realised it wasn’t gold - it was brass. The bitumen inside the barricade was slick with empty bullet casings. Almost completely covered in it.
“Christ,” Anthony said.
“Well,” Geoff said. “That explains the bodies.”
/>
There were weapons inside, too, on the ground. Three Steyr Augs and a black carbine – not an M4 but the older model, the M16 I think. I picked one up excitedly. The others were taking the Steyr Augs. “Hold up,” Geoff said. “Don’t try to fucking shoot those. They’ve been out in the weather for God knows how long. We’ll have to strip them and clean them. And they’ll probably still be fucked. Don’t get too excited.”
“No ammo left, anyway,” I said.
“Me neither,” Len said, with one of the Steyrs.
“Yeah, same,” Matt said.
“Got a pattern here,” Jonas said, with the last one.
“Not really a surprise,” Simon said. “Looks like the last fucking stand here. Eureka stockade, Long Tan, Alamo kinda shit.”
“You do realise at Long Tan we actually won?” Alan said.
“Well. You know what I mean.”
“It couldn’t have been just these four, could it?” I said. “For all this?”
“No way,” Jonas said. “More bullets than four guns could shoot.”
“No zombies in town,” Anthony said. “What does that say?”
“It says that some people got away,” Geoff said. He’d climbed up onto the fire engine, looking out past the town limits to the fields and forests scattered across the island. Thunder was rumbling again, sounding closer now. “There were people here, and there was an outbreak, and some of them ran off into the island and when there was nobody here left alive, the zombies followed them. Just like Perth and Bunbury and all that. What happened next is anyone’s guess.”
“So they might still be out there,” I said.
“They might be,” Geoff said. “Or the human survivors might be. Either way, let’s hope they went all the way to the other end.”
“We’re still stuck on the same island as them,” Simon pointed out.
“Well, it’s a big island.”
“So what next?” Matt asked.
Geoff scratched his beard. “It’s not pretty, but it’s safe. We find somewhere defensible, bring everyone over from the Maersk, wait out the storm. Figure out what to do next tomorrow.”
The thought of it made me feel awful - bringing those little kids and those old people into this. Never mind the fact that we didn’t know what the hell else was lurking on this gigantic island, the town itself was morbid enough. But we didn’t really have a choice. We couldn’t leave them on a crippled ship stranded on a sandbar.
Geoff wanted somewhere close to the wharf – just in case we were attacked, worst-case scenario, and could be near the boats. Not that fleeing back to the ship would necessarily be the wisest option. Christ, I dunno. You can go crazy thinking up hypotheticals.
So we went back down to the esplanade, fringed with overgrown grass strips and Norfolk pines, and found a pub called the Aurora Hotel. Kingscote was clearly a place where one hotel had developed a comfortable monopoly, and the same name was borne by both a slick modern resort and a more old-fashioned sandstone pub across the road. We picked the pub, moving in through the shattered glass and overturned furniture of a bistro area, past the silent ranks of pokie machines - another sign we weren’t in WA any more - and up the stairs to the second floor. Once we’d cleared all the bedrooms up there (nothing to report but a single rotting suicide lying on a bed, from which we retrieved a now-empty revolver before closing the door and pushed a draught snake in front of it) it seemed reasonable enough to start bringing people over from the Maersk – especially since the dark clouds were pushing towards us, the thunder was rumbling ominously overhead, and the air had that feeling which said that any minute the rain was going to start pelting down.
Geoff and Anthony went back to the pier, taking the boats over to the Maersk. There were still twenty-four people aboard. “This is a bit fucked,” I said. “They’ve got space for four each. So that’s three round trips before they can get everyone off. That storm’s coming.”
“Declan’ll stay,” Matt said.
“You reckon?”
“Fucking oath. Bet you anything. He’s a coward.”
“Well, that’s still twenty-three people. Maybe we should look for some other boats.”
“There aren’t any,” Matt said. “You saw that.”
It was true. Like any other port, Kingscote had been stripped of its vessels. Hardly surprising when the dead were rising – people took whatever route of escape they could find. I wondered what it had been like here, after it had been declared a safe zone, for that precious couple of months before the final fall. Like Albany? Police state, conscription, hard edge? Or had it been milder, with that great big border of the ocean between them and the mainland? Had there been soldiers here, evacuated from the mainland? There must have been – there’d been an APC at the intersection. But how many? Had it mostly been local people, banding together?
We’ll never know now. I guess it doesn’t matter.
Geoff and Anthony returned after an hour with the first group of people: Ellie, Mrs. Rotherham and her 60-year-old son Sam and daughter-in-law Sadie, Sarah the RFDS nurse, Jennifer Moretta the roadhouse worker… and Ash.
I was startled about Ash. I’d actually forgotten about him - I’d had so much to think about in the last few days that if I’d thought of him at all I’d assumed he died of his wounds. But no, he’d been there, lying in a Maersk cabin somewhere. In fact I remembered now that when we’d found him on the beach at Eucla I’d felt around his injuries and, despite all his wheezing and coughing, he’d had an exit wound. Maybe he hadn’t been so badly hurt. A flesh wound. He seemed okay. Well, I wasn’t about to ask him about it. At least nobody had been stupid enough to give him a gun. As long as I could keep Matt off his throat things should be all right.
The storm was breaking. Thick raindrops were splattering down on the esplanade outside, the whitecaps on the bay whipping up even further. Geoff and Anthony had already set out again, their little tinnies like corks on the bay, the Maersk a distant gloomy shape in the drizzle. I stood on the balcony watching them go, hands tucked into the deep pockets of my coat, listening to the rain drum down on the tin roof and gurgle through the gutters.
I looked to my left, across the road, and saw a pale white face looking out from the hotel complex.
My blood ran cold. The face had drawn back but I knew what I’d seen. A kid, a girl, wide-eyed and frightened. I turned slowly and went back inside the pub, then hurried downstairs.
The other Euclans were fixing up barricades around the windows, more for want of anything better to do than anything else. Sam and Sadie were helping Mrs Rotherham upstairs to find somewhere to lie down. In the kitchen, people were pawing through the pantries and cool rooms, looking for anything that wasn’t spoiled. I made my way through the overturned pans and pots and woks and found Matt and Ellie sitting outside on upturned milk crates, on the loading dock, having what looked like an angry conversation. Didn’t care. “I just saw someone,” I said urgently.
“What do you mean?” Matt said irritably.
“I was up on the balcony and I saw a kid in the building across the road,” I said. “The newer hotel. A kid, looking back! We have to go check it out.”
“We should tell the others,” Ellie said, standing up. “Where’s Jonas?”
“No, no, no,” I hissed. “If we all go over there they’ll know we’re coming.”
“You said it was just a kid,” Ellie said.
“Might be others,” I said. “Or if it is just a kid, they might bolt – but we can’t all rush off over there. Just us.”
I’d actually been hoping to find Matt alone. But Ellie was unholstering her revolver, zipping her jacket up over her slight baby bump. She had a flush of excitement on her face. “All right.”
“Hang on…” Matt said uneasily.
“Dad and Anthony will be back with more soon,” Ellie said. “If there’s other people they could be walking into an ambush. Come on, let’s go!”
We headed out the loading dock. Matt was swearing und
er his breath. I knew it seemed crazy, but somehow I thought it was the right decision. I’d looked at that building and I’d known that there was nothing more dangerous in there than the young girl I’d seen, and maybe a couple of others. I don’t know how I knew that. I just did, as surely as I knew that all of this was just a distraction and I needed to get to the spaceship in the east and nothing could hurt me until I did…
Insane. But that was how I felt. That’s still how I feel now.
We left the pub, stayed low in the back alley, looped around another street towards the hotel complex. There’d been a swimming pool and a restaurant here, the pool filled to the brim with green algae and the restaurant a chaotic mess of broken glass and upturned chairs. We stepped inside the corridors of the hotel, out of the slowly strengthening rain, and made our way quietly down the dank and mouldy hallway with our guns drawn and ears pricked.
It wasn’t hard to find them. They were down in some kind of rec room, ransacked and jumbled, mattresses and cardboard boxes of food and suitcases overflowing with clothes. There were sheets draped across a pool table like a children’s cubby house, and little shadows moving inside. Inaudible whispers.
We glanced at each other in the doorway, and holstered our guns. The three of us walked into the room quietly, stepping over toys and clothes and books and a dozen other random objects. We paused in the middle of the room; the kids had stopped talking, and maybe realised we were there.
Matt spoke before anyone else. “Hey,” he said softly. “Hey, we’re not going to hurt you. We just want to talk to you, okay?”
He stepped forward a little further. Another whisper from behind the sheets. “Are you guys on your own in here?” he asked, with that soft, gentle, talking-to-children voice. “We won’t hurt you. It’s not good to be on your own, you know. Why don’t you come out and talk to us?”
He was crouching down now. Ellie and I had followed only a few paces behind him. Matt reached forward to open the sheets.
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 53
