The creature’s eyes opened. Her head twisted as the mouth opened slightly. The organs in the chest cavity had not been eviscerated; they pulsed with a soft squishing sound as some form of life surged through the vessels of the flayed figure that would not die.
“Maa . . . thaagghh . . .” the thing on the table gurgled.
“Shhh,” Else whispered, stroking the smooth skin of her own face. “Sleep now,” she said softly and straightened up. The blade in her hand came swooping down, piercing the skull through the forehead and splitting the bone. The thing on the table shuddered and then let out a long sigh as it died.
“Fucking Frankenstein shit . . .” Joel muttered, wiping his feet on a clear patch of stone floor.
“She’s fucking them up . . . she’s making them . . . monsters and then cutting them open to find out what went wrong,” Else shuddered.
“Else . . .” Joel hissed from the other side of the room. She walked away from the dead body and pulled another plastic curtain aside to see what Joel had found.
The five incubator tanks were arranged against the far wall. Standing vertically, and over six feet tall, each tank had barely enough room to hold an adult human being. Their cylindrical glass walls and polished stainless steel gleamed in the dim light. Two of the tanks were empty; the remaining three were filled with a thick pink liquid that swirled and bubbled. Dim shapes could be seen floating in those tanks, each shape curled in a fetal position and all connected to umbilical tubes attached to their chests.
Each of the floating bodies was an insane parody of the human form. One had a head swollen with intracranial fluid until it took on an alien proportion, the limbs withered and weak by comparison. The second had grown to fill the tank, but had not developed past an early embryonic phase. It floated there like an enlarged photo of the early development of some kind of animal, unrecognizable as human or any other species.
The final failed experiment had long waving tentacles in place of arms and legs. Its face pressed against the glass. When they peered in at it, Else felt another pang of disgust and aching grief as she recognized the features of the Courier, father of her baby and savior of the world.
“Half man, half octopus . . .” Joel muttered, his face screwing up with disgust.
The thing in the narrow cylindrical tank retreated and then slammed its head against the glass, the toothless mouth wide open as it screamed through the swirling liquid.
Else’s face was pale with shock. “This is where I came from. A tank like this, in Sydney. Hundreds of us, grown and then fed to the dead.”
“That’s really fucked up,” Joel said.
“It ended. He saved me. The Courier. We saved the world.”
“Which is exactly what I am trying to do,” Donna’s voice echoed around the chamber.
Chapter 14
Else spun around, forcing Joel to duck under the sweep of her blade. Donna stood in the middle of the dissection room, her white coat stained with splashes of blood.
“You just don’t understand the work I am doing here,” Donna continued.
“I understand enough. I’m going to destroy it all. You will have to find some other way to create monsters.”
Donna flicked the accusation away like an annoying fly. “Mistakes in the gene sequencing. I lack the computer power of either Woomera or the Sydney facility. What I wouldn’t do for access to their supercomputers and a nuclear reactor to power the hundreds of incubation tanks it would require to perfect the process.”
“You can’t keep making these things from our cells. They . . . they don’t need to live like that.”
“Humanity needs to live. A stronger, purer humanity. One resistant to the virus, one with your strength, your longevity, and your antiviral blood. The Courier and you have something in your genetics, something that made the solution possible.”
“I’ll give you some blood. You can make your vaccine from that,” Else insisted.
“I’ve tried that!” Donna snapped. “Christ I have fucking tried that in over a thousand experiments. Your blood is the carrier for the antiviral. I need to understand what it is about you that makes you toxic to the evols.”
“You made me like this. Why don’t you know?” Else demanded.
“We finished the work that took Haumann ten years to develop through hundreds and thousands of generations of Tankbread. If he had lived, he would have sacrificed you to the Adam and destroyed everything himself. Instead he died, taking his secrets to the grave with him.”
“So, go to Sydney, go to the Opera House. Find his notes, his files, and all his research.”
Donna put a hand to her head as if feeling a migraine coming on. “The small, experimental, and highly effective fission reactor they had installed as a power source under the Opera House had something of a meltdown after you passed through. The damage was slight and the radiation was mostly contained, but the lab area is completely irradiated.”
“I’m going to burn all of this,” Else said, sliding one of her homemade incendiaries from the rope bandolier.
“You can’t!” Donna rushed forward and skidded to a halt as one of Joel’s spears jabbed at her.
“I have to. You can decide if you want to burn with it or not.”
“Please!” Donna tried to step around Joel’s spear. He moved with her, keeping her back.
“You have no idea what you are doing!” Donna pleaded.
“I have no idea?” Else blinked. “I have . . . ? Fuck! Joel, kill the bitch.”
“What?” Joel hesitated and Donna took the opportunity to scramble for the stairs. Else put her hand on Joel’s shoulder, holding him back.
“We don’t have much time. Help me with these.”
They found drums of chemicals and put the bottles at the base of the ones labeled “Flammable.” Once the incendiary bombs were in place, Else sent Joel to the top of the stairs. “Make sure that door is open,” she said.
When Joel called the all clear, she punched a hole in the nearest drum, lit a match, and set it to the fuses. With one last look around the room, she ran for the stairs.
With Else on his heels, Joel dashed out into the kitchen. They could hear Donna shouting, and a bell started ringing somewhere in the convent.
“How long do we have?” Joel said as they ran for the exit.
“Dunno, not lo—”
A dull whumph sounded deep in the belly of the convent. The floor shook and dust drifted down from the ceiling. The air rushed past them as the explosion took a deep breath. Else and Joel crashed against the outside door, tumbling into the courtyard as the basement exploded upwards, tearing through the kitchen and sending a rolling wall of flame down the corridor.
The blast washed over them and Else cringed, feeling her hair singe and the wash of heat sear her skin. The memory of the pain from the burning ship was as fresh as all her memories.
“Fuck me . . .” Joel said hoarsely. “I think ya used a bit much.”
They stood up. The interior of the convent was flickering with an eerie orange glow. Nuns and other people started running out of the building. Some were coughing and spitting in the thick smoke, others shouting instructions and calling for water to fight the inferno engulfing the building.
As a second explosion rocked the convent, Else pulled Joel by the arm and they ran for the gate in the wall.
“Now what?” Joel shouted as they ran.
“I guess we get the others and get the fuck out of here!”
Joel nodded and kept pace with Else as they dashed through the gate and headed down the trail towards the mesh fence and the road to Mildura that lay beyond.
By the time they reached the outskirts of the town, it seemed clear that a major evol incursion was underway. The dead stood out among the ruins, the half-built structures and a few that were now on fire. The people of Mildura had survived in different communities and encampments across Australia for ten years. They knew about fighting the dead, and the shambling invasion met heavy resistance.
“Find Eric and Rache. Tell them to get our people ready to move out!” Else yelled at Joel, who nodded in response. They split up, each readying weapons to fight the zombies as they plunged into the fight. Else let her rage flow. The nauseating memory of seeing herself on Donna’s dissection table, the tanks with the failed clones—these images drove her into a frenzy of killing. Howling, she cleaved the skulls of the dead who reached out to tear and bite. The dead never ceased in their mindless quest for meat, the virus in their cells driving the craving for stem cells sucked from the pure tissue of the living.
A zombie stumbled too close to the disorientating rage of a burning shed and came tottering towards Else, his ragged clothes and hair erupting in a pillar of flame. Else swung her blades, crossing them and severing the dead man’s neck in two places. With a kick she knocked his body back and moved on.
Smoke clouded Else’s vision as shapes loomed in the fog. Weapons ready she lunged forward, striking out and catching her swing just short of a young man’s eye that went wide with terror as he saw her snarling face appear so close to his.
“Get a weapon and fight them or get the fuck out of here!" Else shouted at him. The boy nodded and scrambled away into the smoke and darkness.
Running through the streets, the screams of women caught Else’s attention. A wooden building was under siege, maybe a hundred feral dead. Clawing at the doors and smashing the windows. From the inside a legion of spears, furniture, and crude weapons fought back. Else hacked her way to the front door, cutting through dead flesh, crushing skulls, ending unlives one at a time. Most of the women inside were fighting, saving their breath for the battle.
“Who’s screaming?” Else yelled through a broken window.
“My sister, she’s having a baby,” one of the defenders called back.
“Well tell her to bite down on something. That noise is bringing the dead right to you!” Else spun away from the window as a ragged hand with broken nails tore into the back of her shirt.
“Fuckers,” she hissed and buried a blade in the zombie’s head. Kicking the body off the blade, she ducked under a swinging arm, rising to sever it at the shoulder, then with an upwards swing she punched her other blade through the side of the evol’s head.
“Is Cassie in there?” Else yelled through the window as she fought to keep the dead away.
“I’m here!” Cassie shouted from inside.
“Keep my baby safe!” Else reminded her as the dead mob seethed and rolled down the streets of Mildura.
The buildings funneled them into one long parade that bore down on the defenders. Else stepped out into the street, people gathering behind her. They were armed with blades, machetes, axes, clubs, sticks, shovels, and a few guns. Rache stepped up beside Else. “We kill them all, right?”
Else nodded. “Kill them all.” She raised her weapons high over her head and struck the steel blades together, making sparks fly against the night sky. “Kill them all!” Else yelled.
With a wordless battle cry, Rache charged towards the approaching mob. The people rushed forward, raising weapons, their shouts joining Rache’s. The two groups came together in the smoke and flying cinders of a burning house that drifted over the street.
People screamed, and the evols howled. Blood sprayed, black under the dim light of the moon and stars. The survivors clubbed evols, cutting them down and fighting for their lives. The dead synapses of the evols sparked and flared, the stimulus of the noise, the fire, and the blood driving them into a frenzy. Bared teeth and clawed hands ripped at blood-filled skin as fangs met steel and the street became slick with black slime and spilt guts.
Eric appeared at the side of the advancing dead. With a calm deliberation he crouched and set an armload of duct tape–wrapped balls in a pile at his feet. Retrieving a burning stick from the nearest fire, he touched it to the wick of a softball-sized package in his hand. The fuse fizzed and sparked and he lobbed the ball into the center of the dead crowd before retrieving the next one and repeating the process.
He had just tossed his third grenade when the first one exploded: a loud bang, a flash of light, and a zipping sound cut the air as nails, screws, glass shards, and stones exploded outwards in a deadly cloud of hot shrapnel.
The bombs tore evols apart. The ones nearest the explosions disintegrated; others had limbs torn off and body parts catapulted over a wide area. The noise confused the dead, turning them from the attraction of living flesh within reach and sending them shuffling into each other as they started to mill about, disorientated by the overwhelming stimulus.
Eric bowled his last bomb underarm, sending it into the forest of zombie legs before backing away and disappearing into the smoke.
The explosives wrought destruction and chaos on the ranks of the dead. The tide of battle turned and the survivors rallied. With renewed strength and a glimpse of hope, they charged into the fray once again.
Else saw Hob wielding two axes, the rope leash he wore coiled around his neck like a necklace of shame. He slashed and killed the dead who rose up around him. The handles of both axes were black with gore, and chunks of hair and bone flew from the heads of the axes with each swing. The look on Hob’s face as he destroyed the dead was a bestial grimace of uncontrolled rage and loathing. Else wondered where Anna was and hoped she was still safe.
* * *
When the sun breached the horizon, the smoke was breaking up. A bucket brigade was dousing smoldering buildings next to the bonfires of lost houses. Another group, with cloth tied across their faces, were heaving withered corpses onto the flames.
Rache and Else sat on the steps of the building where the women had sheltered. From inside came the cries of babies being cuddled and comforted by mothers and wet nurses. Else’s son fussed and cried in her arms, the smoke in the air getting in his eyes and making them tear up. He had been fed and washed and was now wrapped in a clean blanket, but he remained unsettled.
“This place isn’t safe either,” Rache said and spat phlegm flecked with black into the dust.
“It’s no safer or more dangerous than any other place,” Else replied, moving the baby to her shoulder and rubbing his back.
“It’s not our place. It’s too far from the ocean. I need to be close to the sea. How can I be the captain of my own ship if we are in the middle of onland?” Rache frowned at the carnage and destruction.
“If I was going to have a place, I would do it differently,” she continued.
“I’d like to try setting up the zombie control barriers, like on the plans we found in the church,” Else said.
“Exactly, and have better food and resources and not be so far from the sea,” Rache replied.
The cleanup crews on the street scattered as horses came thundering down the road. They reined in, nearly a dozen riders in all, armed with rifles, faces marked with the painted crosses of the convent disciples.
“We’re looking for the woman called Else,” the lead rider said.
Else stayed where she was. “I’m Else, what do you want?” she said.
“You have to come with us, you’re under arrest.”
“What does that mean?” Rache asked, half-rising, with a machete gripped in her hand, to defend Else.
“It means I have to go with them.” Else stood up and gently handed her baby over to Rache. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry.”
Stepping out into the street, she approached the lead rider. “Let’s go.”
A rider slid off his horse and approached her, open handcuffs cradled in his hands. “Touch me and I will kill you,” Else said in a friendly, conversational tone.
The rider hesitated and looked to his leader. “You’ll come quietly?” the lead rider asked.
“Yes,” Else nodded.
The lead rider urged his horse forward and extended an arm down to Else. She gripped it and he swung her up into the saddle behind him. The riders turned and galloped out of Mildura, heading up the dusty road past the dying lake towards the con
vent of Saint Peter’s Grace.
* * *
The fire set by Else and Joel had gutted the main building of the convent. Work crews were busy piling up rubbish, and others tended the injured that lay under a tarpaulin shade at one side of the courtyard.
The rider in front of Else helped her slide down before dismounting himself. With a firm grip on Else’s arm and the other riders standing behind them, she was led into the shade of the tarp.
“She’s here,” the rider said.
Most of the wounded were burned. Some rasped and wheezed with smoke inhalation; others had suffered fractures from falling debris. It took Else a moment to recognize Donna under her bandages; she reclined in a padded chair, one side of her face swathed in white cloth, her remaining eye glaring at Else with pure hatred.
“You fucking cunt,” Donna hissed, her burnt lips making it hard to form proper words. “You have destroyed my work. You have set the program back an incalculable number of years.”
“I did what I had to do,” Else replied.
“That’s what you think. Well I have news for you, freak. I’m going to rebuild, and I’m going to slice your skin off one sliver at a time. I’m going to dissect you and keep you alive so you can watch me do the same thing to your fucking offspring.” Donna slumped back in the chair, her energy spent.
Else tensed. “You come near my son and I will kill you. Then I’ll let you come back and I’ll keep you on a leash and let you endure eternity as a mindless evol.”
Donna laughed, a harsh sound that seemed to rip her burnt throat. “Take her away, lock her up. I’m going to enjoy hearing her scream,” she croaked.
Else lashed out as the riders grabbed her arms. She felt the satisfying crunch of bone as her fist connected with someone’s nose. More hands grabbed her and she snarled and kicked, grappling with her attackers and ignoring the blows that rained down on her.
Fighting for her life was all Else had ever known—against the dead, against a world that went from terrifying and confusing to senseless with each passing season. She struck out with her boots, hearing the screams of someone whose knee dislocated under her kick. More riders piled on, punching her belly, face, and head. They held her down and someone kicked her hard across the face. Blood gushed from her nose and the taste of hot copper almost choked her.
Tankbread 2: Immortal Page 25
