“So what does it mean?” Matt asked – talking to the Endeavour, not me.
We don’t know, the Endeavour said. Aaron suspects the dreams are prophetic, just as the dreams you had about coming here. What do you think?
“I think it was just a dream,” Matt said.
He didn’t want to talk much more about it – went off to do a training session with Sergeant Blake. I was left alone to talk to the ship. “What do you think?” I said. “I mean, what do you actually think?”
I think we will have to wait and see.
July 22
I was up on the ridge with Trish this evening, playing with her kids. They’ve been owlish and skittish for most of the time since they’ve come here – this new place, all these new people – but Andy had packed their toboggans in with the load of supplies he sent Matt and Jonas back with, and they’ve been having endless fun trekking up and down the eastern slope and sliding back down again. It’s nice to hear children laughing. That’s one of the things I miss most about Eucla, actually. I wonder about those kids we took from the derelict hotel on Kangaroo Island sometimes, the boy who pepper sprayed Matt and his little sister. Oliver and Sasha. I hope they’re doing okay.
The sun was just sinking behind the western mountains when Corporal Rahvi came trudging up the slope, the kids laughing and screeching as they skidded past him. He whistled up at me. “Yo! Aaron! Tobias wants us in the command tent.”
I told Trish I’d see her later and stepped carefully down the slope to meet him, and we headed down into the camp together. “What’s it about?” I said. It was beginning to snow, the flakes hissing in the campfires.
“Don’t ask me. Bad news, probably.”
The dusk was coming on quickly, and inside the command tent Tobias had turned on several Tilley lamps. The others were already there, gathered around the table: Matt, Sergeant Blake, Captain Sanders, Simon, Jonas and Professor Llewellyn. The Endeavour, as always, would be listening in.
“So what’s happening?” I asked.
“I wanted to bring you up to speed with a couple of things,” Tobias said, his face emblazoned with the shadows cast by the lamps.
“First of all, we’ve lost contact with Colonel Yates. For those who don’t remember, he was the commander of a US Air Force base in Utah. After the fall of NORAD he was more or less the closest thing we had to a senior commander in the mainland US; we lost touch with Fairchild in Washington a while ago, and Mt Weather’s been quiet since March.”
“How long do you mean when you say lost contact?” Rahvi asked.
“A few days. But Christmas Island has picked up other broadcasts suggesting it’s fallen.”
“What were we relying on these guys for again?” Simon asked.
“Nuclear warheads,” Tobias said. “We can’t launch missiles at the machine bases, but from what we’ve ascertained – and from what the Endeavour believes – a detached warhead could be taken within their defensive field and then detonated. If we did so in a co-ordinated attack, we could destroy the machine bases on Earth. Colonel Yates was in control of the most organised military force left that had friendly channels of communications with us.”
“What about India? Doesn’t India have nukes?” Simon asked.
“India’s not our ally,” Sergeant Blake said.
“I thought we had nukes,” Jonas said.
“What? Why would you think we had nukes?” I asked.
“Quiet!” Tobias said, waving a hand. “Yes, we’ve been in contact with China and India. And France, and the United Kingdom. And Russia. But communication means just that: a few radio messages, a few wires, nothing solid. Even co-ordinating this thing is going to be massive strategic undertaking. There are machine bases in Africa, in South-East Asia, in countries that have no functioning governments or militaries left whatsoever. Australia at least has that. But so far, no, we can’t procure a nuclear warhead from a friendly nation. Certainly not now that the Utah base is gone.”
“Jesus Christ,” Professor Llewellyn said. “Ten thousand nukes on the planet and we can’t get our hands on one?”
“Well, a lot of those nukes are in silos swarming with undead,” Tobias said. “Or submarines that have gone dark or deserted. But there is another option that might be open to us.” He paused. “There are nuclear weapons on Australian soil.”
“The secret program?” Captain Sanders said suddenly. “Ha! I knew it!”
“The what?” Simon said.
“No!” Tobias said irritably. “No secret program. That’s an old wives’ tale.”
“What secret program?” Simon repeated. “What are you on about?”
Tobias sighed. “It’s an urban myth in the military. That Australia has disassembled nuclear weapons, ready to go if need be, but not – technically speaking – currently existing as nuclear weapons, so we wouldn’t be in breach of any treaties.”
“That was actually what India did for quite a while in the ‘70s,” Professor Llewellyn said.
“How do you know it’s a myth?” Matt said.
“Look,” Tobias said irritably. “I haven’t heard jack from Christmas Island, and if there was ever a time to use some secret nuclear weapons program, now would be it, all right? We don’t have nuclear weapons. We rely on the US for protection. Two hundred years of Australian military history revolves around being allied to a greater power, and you don’t need to go to Duntroon to know that. For Christ’s sakes, people, use your brains for once.”
Sergeant Blake coughed. “So – nuclear weapons on Australian soil?”
“Well,” Captain Tobias. “Soil’s not be the right way to put it. But nuclear weapons within our grasp, yes.
“In January, a US aircraft carrier and its battle group were anchored in Brisbane. The USS Abraham Lincoln. It was travelling between anti-piracy missions in Somalia, on its way to war games off Hawaii.
“Brisbane’s harbour is in Moreton Bay, and there’s a single channel leading in and out of the anchorage. We’re not entirely sure what happened, but for some reason the Abraham Lincoln foundered and sank. It might have struck another sunken ship, there might have been an infection onboard that led to a bit of chaos – we have no idea. The end result is, it sank. So we currently have an American aircraft carrier on the seabed of Moreton Bay. And an American aircraft carrier, without a doubt, has nuclear warheads on board.”
The tent was silent, but for the hissing of Tilley lamps. “Um,” Simon said. “So, if it’s at the bottom of the ocean, how does that help us?”
“It’s at the bottom of the Moreton Bay shipping channel,” Tobias said, “which is about sixty, seventy metres deep. Parts of it are sticking above the waterline, I’m told.”
“I don’t see what we’re supposed to do with that from here in the Snowies,” Jonas said.
“We aren’t going to do anything,” Tobias said. “The HMAS Canberra is currently offshore from Sydney, resupplying military bases in the area and evacuating some personnel. Christmas Island is sending it to Brisbane. There are divers onboard. A nuclear warhead could be retrieved.”
The tent fell silent again. I knew what we were all imagining: Navy divers venturing down into the labyrinth of a sunken US aircraft carrier, the silty remains of what had once been a floating fortress – with thousands and thousands of zombies still inside it.
“This feels like a real Plan B option,” Simon said. “We couldn’t ask China to send us one nuke? We couldn’t get that Yates guy to send us one nuke?”
“Yeah, for sure, mate,” Sergeant Blake said. “He could have used FedEx. Could’ve all been over by now. Wish we’d thought of that.”
“You know what I mean,” Simon said. “China – I mean, China’s next door. They still have Navy ships, don’t they? And isn’t there still a US Navy fleet in the Atlantic?”
“Yeah – anchored off Greenland, overcrowded and understocked,” Tobias said. “They’re not sending a ship down here for us.”
“Yeah, but doesn’t China
have something like that? Or India? And weren’t there US Navy ships in Japan and South Korea and stuff?”
Tobias pinched the bridge of his nose and gestured at the endless reams of paper on his desk. “You want to go back to Christmas Island, you want to be some post-apocalyptic diplomat chasing this shit down, be my guest. It’s mostly listening to radio static. About everybody in the world is dead. So we’re working with what we have, okay?”
“Captain?” Corporal Rahvi asked. “Uh, Brisbane… the HMAS Canberra, going up to Brisbane. That’s Draeger’s turf, isn’t it?”
Draeger. The rogue commander in northern New South Wales they’d been talking about around the campfire the other day. I have a vague notion of rogue military commanders operating in far-away, tropical places like Cape York and the Top End, but piecing together my mental map I realised that Draeger was much closer – in between us and Brisbane, in fact.
“Draeger’s northernmost outpost is in Inglewood, Queensland,” Tobias said. “That’s just north of the border and a good 150 clicks west of Brisbane. A little close for comfort, but it’s the outskirts of his little empire, not the centre.”
“RAAF Amberley?” Captain Sanders asked.
“Overrun in January,” Tobias said. “We have a skeleton crew of RAAF and civilians loyal to the government who are holding on to Brisbane Airport, and we still have the Army Aviation Centre at Oakey as well. Look – Draeger’s a serious threat, we know he’s a serious threat, he has considerable RAAF assets and he’s tangled with bases near Sydney in the past. But Christmas Island is aware of that and they’re working on that and anything that gets decided will have gone through a solid risk-benefit scenario. The biggest problem is communications. If we’re digging up a nuke, and Draeger gets wind of it… well, someone with his profile, you know he’d be all over that. The Canberra might have to be on radio silence for the duration. Which hopefully won’t be too long. But, yeah, communications is the biggest problem.”
He glanced at me and Matt as he said that. Just the quickest of glances, and enough to make me feel nervous.
“Don’t you use coded communications?” Jonas asked.
“Military codes are developed by militaries to use against other militaries,” Tobias said. “And unfortunately, we’re all supposed to be on the same side here.” He was staring down at the map of Australia, and I knew, I just knew, that he was staring at the little dot in Victoria marked PUCKAPUNYAL.
The conversation went on for some time: the risks of Draeger and New England, the likelihood of being able to secure a warhead in the zombie-infested waters around an aircraft carrier, the even greater Rubik’s cube of getting disparate militaries from around the world to work together in a co-ordinated attack further down the line. Eventually Tobias dismissed us, and we trudged out into the night.
It was snowing heavier than it had been before – that sort of thick, gentle, windless snow that muffles all sound and makes you feel like you’re living inside a Christmas card. I could see the distant glow of campfires but most people were staying in their tents. Matt and I trudged through the already-thick ground snow back towards the Endeavour.
“You see the way he looked at us?” I said. “Communications. One of us could go up there. Untraceable, untappable communications link.”
“Huh?” Matt said.
“Weren’t you listening?”
“No,” he said. “I was… what?”
“One of us could go up there,” I said. “We can communicate over long distance. Nobody could eavesdrop on that, the HMAS Canberra could stay in radio silence and still talk to us, talk to Christmas Island. That was the first thing I thought. What were you thinking about?”
He stared down at the snow. “I was thinking about that dream I had. That diver surfacing and screaming.”
July 23
We went to see Tobias in the morning. It had been snowing heavily all night and the sky was still overcast, with another foot of fresh snow covering up all the muddy slush that had been cut through the valley over the past few weeks. Already people were cutting new paths through the snow, slushy trails leading to the latrines or out to the woods or up to the ridge.
Tobias was actually out on the ridge already, on the satellite phone. I’ve never been quite clear why he goes up there – a satellite phone doesn’t need a good signal like that, you can use it anywhere in the open air, that’s the point – but maybe he doesn’t want anybody else overhearing classified conversations. Or maybe he just likes to look down at the Endeavour and the valley and think.
When he came back down Matt and I put our proposal to him. The Endeavour backed us up; it has full confidence that Matt and I should be able to communicate over any length of distance. Tobias listened to us, standing around the map table, looking down at the sweep of rivers and highways and state borders.
“You know, Professor Llewellyn suggested the same thing,” he said. “Civilians seem to be getting a lot of big ideas in their heads these days.”
“You’re the one who said communications would be an issue,” Matt said. “This is the perfect solution, isn’t it?”
“There are no perfect solutions, Matt, and if there were they certainly wouldn’t look like this.”
“It’s untraceable,” I said. “It’s pretty much instantaneous. We could do it every night. One of us could send a report to the other down here, and you could send it on to Christmas Island. The ship could sit there in radio silence and still be in touch with you all the time.”
“I can see that,” Tobias said. “I’m not sure the Defence chiefs will see it the same way. They plan operations by the book – with good reason. This would be unusual.”
“Well, we live in unusual times,” I said. “Look: there’s a problem, we’re presenting a solution. At least talk to Christmas Island about it.”
“All right,” he said. “I will. Anything else?”
I glanced over at Matt. “No, that’s it,” he said.
Tobias dismissed us. We walked back past the Endeavour, past the ranked and regimented lines of military tents, the billowing campfire smoke, flecks of ash settling on our shoulders like dandruff. “Why didn’t you tell him about the dream you had?” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t really like to share my dream journal with SAS captains, they’re not really into it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It was just a dream, Aaron. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “You have a dream, one of those dreams, about a scuba diver surfacing with an injury. And a few days later we find out one of us might be heading off to Brisbane where the HMAS Canberra’s going to be sending divers down into a wreck? You think that’s a coincidence?”
“It muddies the waters,” he said. “We don’t need to tell him about that. He might decide not to send me.”
“Why not?” And what makes you think it would be you? I thought.
“Because what if it does come true? If I can’t be there to see it, it can’t happen.”
“Well, that’s not true. Maybe it will happen anyway.”
“This is exactly what I mean,” Matt said. “It’s pointless thinking about it. It’s like the one you had about Andy. What do you want him to do about it? Better not to know. Where is Andy, anyway?”
His party is due back from Barton Dam this afternoon, the Endeavour said.
They actually came back earlier than that, just before noon, making good time on the horses, I guess. Andy and three soldiers, all on horseback, trailing a further four behind them. I was out near the snow gum forest at the time, doing weapons training with Sergeant Blake and his group. “You’ll have to learn to ride, boys,” Andy grinned, tipping his Akubra at us before cantering over to the main camp to get to work on building a corral.
I still haven’t told him. Matt’s right. What good would it do?
July 25
Captain Tobias came to our campfire last night and pulled Matt and I aside for a quiet word. �
�Christmas Island’s agreed to send one of you north.”
I wasn’t sure how to react. It was what I’d wanted, what we’d both wanted, but as soon as he said those words and it became real I felt a sick feeling in my stomach.
“Which one?” Matt said.
“You,” Tobias said. “That’s my decision, not the government’s.”
“Why Matt?” I demanded.
“Because I said so,” Tobias said, and didn’t need to elaborate. Because Matt can handle himself better, if anything happens. Because Matt’s the leader, out of the two of us. Because I’m always going to be the junior twin, the lesser one, the one in his shadow.
I bit my tongue. I didn’t really want to go. So why did I feel so bitter?
“How am I getting up there?” Matt asked.
“We’ll have to sort that out,” Tobias said. “We have another Chinook supply run coming in from Wagga in a few days. You can go with them, fly out from there up to Brisbane.”
“So he goes up to Queensland,” I said. “We stay in touch. They dredge up a nuke. Then what?”
“You know that’s just the start. We need to co-ordinate things with other countries. The important thing, the first step, is that we get our hands on a warhead.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, what happens to Matt? How does he get back here?”
Tobias waved a hand. “The warhead will have to come back down south anyway. He can come back on the HMAS Canberra.”
I thought of all that distance, all that land and ocean. All that time.
“Don’t give me that look, Aaron,” Tobias said. “This was your idea.”
After Tobias had left Matt turned to me. “What’s the matter with you? You look sick.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t like… look, I know it was our idea. I know! But splitting up just seems…”
“We’ll be fine. I can talk to you every day.” He grinned. “That’s the whole point, right?”
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 85
