“We drove it out of New England,” Sharp replied, “but we ran out of fuel not long after we got into the national park. We found this place and carried it up. Fucking pain in the ass to get it up the ridge. We just wanted to lay low for a while, lose the heat from New England. Sent a party out to look for more fuel. But then the zombies showed up.”
“How are we going to get this onboard?” David asked. The blimp was secured to the walkway outside, with a height difference that one man could easily jump or scramble up, but which would be impossible to heft a nuclear warhead across.
“We’ll need to rig up a pulley,” Sharp said. “Tell you what, there’s some equipment in one of the workshops downstairs. I’ll go grab it, if you two lift that up to the catwalk.”
We agreed, and he disappeared off down one of the passages. “Fuck this,” I whispered to David. “This isn’t right. Wait here.”
He voiced some complaint or warning, but I wasn’t listening. I followed the sound of the sergeant’s footsteps down corridors, past offices and storerooms. The corridor was lit with electric lights; the observatory must have its own power source.
The thing that bothered me – apart from the absence of the fifteen men I’d expected – was that he claimed to be an RAAF sergeant.
There had only been five RAAF men at Brisbane Airport. Jones had been one. Flying Officer Kemeny had been one. I couldn’t remember the names of the other three, but I could damn well remember their faces, and Sharp hadn’t been one of them.
One open utility room caught my eye. Inside, amidst the mops and boilers and cleaning products, was a pile of... sleeping pallets. Clothes. Backpacks. Kit stoves. Empty MRE cases and noodle cups. Signs that people had been living here. Sharp had gone through the observatory, removed any evidence of the other fourteen men and shoved it in here.
I drew my Beretta.
True to his word, I found Sharp in some kind of workshop, a large windowless room near the bottom of the observatory which had probably once been a garage. He was dragging a bunch of ropes and chains out of a locker, but when he heard the snick-snick of the Beretta he dropped them, and slowly turned around to face me.
I was about five metres away, standing in the doorway with the gun levelled at his chest. “Did you kill them?” I asked quietly.
He nodded. I wondered briefly how he’d managed to kill fourteen men. Did he wait till they were asleep? Slit their throats one by one? Dump them over the edge of the catwalk into the zombie horde outside, disposing of them as efficiently as tossing a body over the side of a ship at sea?
“When?” I asked.
“Last night. When we knew you were coming.”
“Why?”
“To stop you from taking it south. Because we need it for New England.”
I could have laughed. Since we’d landed to find only one man I’d been gripped by a horrible gnawing feeling in my belly, a fear and confusion that didn’t make sense. Out here in the middle of nowhere, on top of a mountain, below a clear blue sky on a hot spring day, with this unsettlingly cleanshaven man... I hadn’t imagined the answer would be anything so mundane. I’d been filled with irrational fears of ghosts, of mysterious disappearances, of some inexplicable Picnic at Hanging Rock shit.
But it was just another rusted-on devotee to General Draeger, dedicated to the service of a fleeting nation that no longer existed.
I remembered, suddenly, the first time I’d heard about Cloud Mountain. It had been the officer at the watermill, the artist’s house where we’d retrieved the PAL codes, calmly telling me about how easily they’d get the nuke back. Before that I hadn’t even known where Blake’s people had fled, except that it was somewhere in Wollemi National Park. It should have been clear to me then: the Republic had a spy amongst them. That was why he’d pretended to be an Air Force man, because the sailors – who had been the bulk of the crash survivors – had all known each other. The problem was that he’d retained that guise when meeting me.
“New England doesn’t exist anymore,” I said. “You murdered fourteen people for nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Have you not heard what happened? You must have a radio. You were reporting to Jagungal. When was the last time you talked to New England?” He didn’t say anything, and I looked at him in contempt. “You stupid fucking bastard. How did you do it?”
“Poison,” he said. “In the food. They were dying anyway, Matt, we were on the last of the rations, your people were never going to come…”
“Shut the fuck up,” I said. “Just shut the fuck up. Pick up those chains and shit. You’re going to help us get that nuke into the blimp.”
“And then what?” he said, bending over to pick up the chains. “You going to leave me here? You going to kill me?”
I was absolutely intending to kill him, but maybe leaving him there alone to think about what he’d done would be more fitting. But it didn’t matter, because as he reached for the chains he suddenly darted his hand out to the side and flicked off the light switch.
The room was plunged into darkness.
There were only six bullets left in the Beretta, and I fired all off them off blindly, the muzzle flare leaping out in the darkness. None of them connected, and a few seconds later he spear-tackled me through the doorway. There was some scrambled fighting – I’m hazy on this – and then something smashed me across the head and knocked me out. I think he was still holding a chain in one hand.
When I woke up the lights were back on, and I was lying on the concrete floor with one eye glazed over with dry blood. I staggered woozily to my feet, fighting the urge to vomit, unsure how long I’d been unconscious.
I grabbed a screwdriver from a tool bench and loped out into the hallway, stumbling as my head spun, grabbing the doorframe, making my way up the corridor as quickly as possible. In the main chamber, the nuke was gone, and I felt a horrible twisting fear in my guts. He’s flown away, a voice in the back of my head whispered, and you’ve lost the nuke and now you’re the one stuck here surrounded by the dead with no way out...
I clambered dizzily up the stairway, onto the catwalk, and out the door into the blinding sunlight on the observatory roof. I could hear the quiet hum of the blimp’s engines. The gondola door was closed, but through the windows I could see Sharp holding a gun on David – he couldn’t fly the blimp himself. The mooring lines were untied, and dangled below the blimp as it slowly lifted up, away from the observatory.
I ran to the edge of the catwalk, jumped, and grabbed one of the lines.
In retrospect this wasn’t the wisest decision, but in my defence, I’d just been clobbered across the head and wasn’t exactly thinking clearly.
So I found myself clutching a docking rope, swaying perilously back and forth about six or seven metres below the gondola, my boots brushing the tips of the trees and a ravenous zombie horde staring up at me through the branches. The blimp was bearing west and struggling to gain altitude with the weight of the nuke, but as we cleared the observatory, the valley began to drop away beneath me, and what would have been a slight drop into a tree above some zombies turned into a hundred metre drop into a rocky stream. Not exactly an improvement.
I’d been entertaining some stupid notion of climbing up the cable and somehow getting into the gondola, but that wasn’t going to happen. It was a thin rope with no knots and it was all I could do to hold on with both hands, which is to say, one-and-a-half hands. Not only that, but Sharp had spotted me, and as we were above the valley he opened the hatch, steadied himself with one hand and started shooting down at me with his Browning.
The bullets missed. I was still swinging back and forth too much, and the vibrations from the engine made it difficult for him to aim steady. He reloaded, squeezed one eye shut, started taking more careful aim. I was screaming curses at him, unheard over the wind, and wondering if I should just let go and deny him the satisfaction. I was certain I was about to die, one way or another.
Then I s
aw the next ridge. We’d crossed most of the valley and another tree-covered ridge was coming up. Was the blimp unable to get any more altitude, or was David deliberately trying to give me a chance? Either way, as we passed over, for that short window of time, it would be a survivable drop.
If I could make it. If Sharp didn’t shoot me first. If I didn’t lose my grip too early.
A bullet cracked past my ear. Sharp steadied his hand again. I could see down the barrel.
Something struck him from the side, and he whirled around to face it. I heard gunshots go off inside the gondola, and one of the windows was suddenly sprayed with blood. I saw the two of them slam against it, struggling, smearing the blood across the glass, a silent and barely-glimpsed fight –
– and then Sharp was hurled out of the open hatch, screaming as he went past me, plummeting into the trees that were now only thirty metres below us.
“David!” I screamed hoarsely. I was expecting to see his face appear in the hatch, but there was nothing. The blood smears were stark on the windows. “David!” I screamed again.
Nothing. The blimp was continuing on course westward, the hum of the engines the only sound I could hear.
The ridge was approaching. The leaves of the gum trees at its peak would brush the soles of my boots. Beyond that was another valley, and I knew I didn’t have the stamina to hold on across it. Last chance.
The nuke was onboard. The nuke was everything.
In the end, it wasn’t really a decision. I just didn’t have the strength to hold on. As we passed over the ridge, my fingers let go, and I fell.
I tried to grab a tree branch as I went down, and failed. I hit some more branches, breaking them as I fell, and when I hit the ground I went tumbling with the blimp’s built-up velocity down the western slope of the ridge. Eventually I came to a halt at the foot of a gum tree, winded, grazed and bleeding, but miraculously without any broken bones, even if they felt like they were.
I staggered to my feet and clambered the twenty metres or so back up the steep slope, to the top of the ridge. Through the gaps in the foliage I could see the blimp continuing on at a steady speed, cables trailing beneath it, blood on the windows. I watched in despair as it slowly grew smaller and became a mere dot on the western horizon.
I collapsed on the ground in exhaustion and opened my mind to Aaron. What’s wrong? he asked, when I finally made the connection.
The nuke is onboard the blimp, travelling south-west from Cloud Mountain, I croaked. I’m not onboard. David is, but he’s injured or dead.
How the hell did that happen?!
I explained the situation to him. Can you track it? I asked. I don’t think David’s flying it, I think it’s just puttering off in one direction…
Maybe by satellite, Aaron said dubiously. If we had aircraft range up there we’d have rescued you already. Maybe fixed wing… I’d better go tell Tobias, okay? I’ll talk to you again soon.
I sank back into the real world. The scent of eucalyptus flowers, the wind whispering in the leaves, a flock of galahs screeching somewhere in the distance. The terrible pain of the hundred bumps and bruises I’d sustained during my fall.
I staggered to my feet, and felt my pocket for the PAL codebook.
Which wasn’t there.
Either Sharp had taken it onboard the blimp, or it had been on his person when he’d fallen out of it. Wearily, I started making my down the eastern edge of the ridge to look for his body.
It met me halfway up, crawling along, pulling itself by the hands. The fall must have broken his spine as well as killing him. The zombie hissed when it saw me, and pulled itself a little faster up the slope, dead leaves crackling underneath it. I’d lost the screwdriver when I’d jumped onto the cable, but I found a heavy rock and smashed his head in with satisfaction. Smashing it felt good. I wanted to smash it again.
I searched every nook and cranny of his clothing, but the codebook wasn’t there. Which meant it was on the blimp. Or back in the observatory. Or perhaps it had fallen earlier, and was in the river in the valley somewhere...
Didn’t really matter, if we couldn’t get the nuke back.
Aaron called me again a few moments later. Tobias is working on tracking the blimp, okay? So… maybe you should just keep heading south. You won’t be able to keep pace with it, and we still need you to bring the codebook back.
It’s gone, I said miserably. Sharp must have taken it. But I found his body. It’s not on him.
Fuck, Aaron said. We were silent for a moment, then he went on: Maybe it’s on the blimp. It must be. He must have left it on the blimp.
What if it’s not?
We’ll just have to hope it is. Listen, Matt, what’s done is done. You need to get moving. Wollemi National Park is full of zombies. And there’s nobody alive at the observatory now. That horde won’t have any reason to stick around. So neither should you. Keep moving south.
All right, I said wearily. All right. Keep me posted on what happens with the blimp. I’ll talk to you later.
Good luck, Matt.
You too.
I came back to the real world again, and looked to the west. The blimp had all but vanished, a tiny speck on the horizon.
Never have I felt so defeated. Not even when I was locked up with Draeger. At least then the nuke had been in somebody else’s care, the codebook hidden away, and plenty of allies all around – Sergeant Blake hiding out somewhere, the Globemaster survivors to the south, even some friends in captivity along with me. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and survive.
Now everyone’s dead. The Globemaster survivors murdered. Sergeant Blake murdered. Rahvi and Jess and Zhou, probably murdered, and even if they aren’t, they’re in as bad a situation as me. We’ve lost the nuke. Maybe Tobias can come up with something with the government and get it back. But as for me...
For the last three months, that nuke has been the responsibility of me, and Sergeant Blake’s team, and the airmen at Brisbane airport and the sailors aboard the HMAS Canberra. And that group has been stripped away, killed off one by one, until now I’m the only one left and I’ve exhausted all my options and there isn’t anything I can do except try to get home alive.
I got to my feet, and started walking south.
October 25
I didn’t make it any further south than the next few valleys before the sun was going down. I pushed on through the dark anyway, by the light of the stars and the crescent moon, thanking God it was a cloudless night. There was no way I was about to go to sleep up a tree with thousands of zombies just to my north. I’d wake up with dozens clustered around the trunk, which is about as efficient a dead-end as you could hope to get. At least in the observatory I would have been able to stretch out.
By dawn I was utterly exhausted, and could barely move anymore. I found a sturdy looking three-foot stick and sharpened the edge by rubbing it against a rock for a while. Not an ideal weapon, but all I had. I’d crossed a few streams and clambered up some gullies and cliff faces; hopefully that would be enough to earn me a few hours of rest ahead of the horde. I climbed up a gum tree and drifted into exhausted unconsciousness in the lower boughs.
I was woken up mid-morning by the sound of rain pattering down on the leaves around me. A few moments later the sound of groans drifted in. There was a pair of zombies at the bottom of the tree, scratching their hands ragged against the bark and staring up at me.
Two is bad, but not too difficult to deal with. Five or six would have been a real problem; more than a dozen and I would have been totally fucked. But two, I figured I could handle. I crawled out along a branch for a bit to get the right height, holding the stick in my teeth, then lowered myself so I was hanging from my hands. The zombies had no trouble keeping up with my pace while I was in the tree, and they were standing right below me, scratching at my bootheels with bloodied fingernails. I started swinging, built momentum like a pendulum, and at the peak of an arc I let go.
I hit the ground hard and roll
ed, stumbling to my feet, knowing they were literally right behind me. I’d dropped my makeshift spear but managed to pick it up again as I scrambled to escape. I didn’t look behind me. I knew they were only an arm’s length away. I ran across the hillside, down a rabbit trail through thick trees, putting maybe fifty metres of distance between me and them. Then I waited for them to catch up, panting, listening to their hunting gurgles over the gentle trickling of the rain in the eucalyptus leaves.
The spear went easily through the eye of the first one, ramming satisfactorily into its brain, but it became lodged as the zombie crumpled to the ground. I found myself with one boot planted on its neck, trying to yank the spear out as the second zombie came growling up the path towards me. I was on the verge of abandoning it and running when it came free with a wet schloop and I immediately stabbed at the zombie as it lunged towards me with outstretched arms. Missed – the spear burst through its neck and came out the other side. The zombie was shish-kebabbed in front of me, his arms grasping my elbows, blood and viscera pouring from the wound in his throat as he tried to screech at me. I used it to force him sideways, knock him into a tree, send him sprawling. The spear came loose as he did, and before he could get up I stood above him and plunged it into his eye.
I broke off a branch and made a new spear after that. Fuck washing a stick.
I encountered no further zombies for the rest of the day, gradually making my way south-west, through endless bushland, white sandstone mesas rising from the canopy. After a month in New England, where the forest was broken by towns and highways and patchwork fields, there’s something unsettling about this landscape. Primeval, I think. As though none of our buildings or cities or grand works ever existed at all on this ancient continent.
In New England, on the run from the Republic, I would have welcomed a wilderness like this to escape into. I didn’t think about the other consequences. I need to get out. This forest, for me, is like a desert. I need food. I can’t find any fruits or berries I’m confident are edible, and without a gun I can’t hunt. Birds mock me from above, and kangaroos bound down past the slopes, and there’s nothing I can do.
End Times Box Set [Books 1-6] Page 149
