Life Goes On | Book 3 | While The Lights Are On [Surviving The Evacuation]

by Tayell, Frank

  The undead sci-fi fan had reached the stairs, but had managed to keep its feet as it trip-ran down and into the looped fire hose, against which it pushed and shoved. As its arms reached through the coiled barrier, the hose grew taut, slipping against the hasty knot, but it held. For now. Giving her time to deal with the zombie in the waistcoat.

  The object Avalon had given her was a telescopic baton. A sharp flick, and it extended. She swung, a heavy backhand, smashing the metal tube into the undead student’s outstretched arms, knocking them aside, but otherwise doing no damage. Anna paced back and swung again, this time a downswing aimed at the zombie’s neck, but it lurched to the left, and the blow landed on its shoulder. The creature flinched, and while its hand swiped, Anna had to duck to avoid the ponderous swing of its club-like hand. But her foot slipped, and she sprawled, hitting her head on the floor.

  Ignoring the pain, she bounced to her feet, yelling in anger and fury as she hacked the baton two-handed at the zombie’s knees and legs, ducking beneath its flailing arms as it fell. As the zombie thrashed on the floor, she aimed another two-handed swing at its bucking head, caused its chin to smash into the floor. A third cracked its skull. A fourth sent brain and gore flying through the air.

  The clumsy knot securing the fire hose gave under the weight of the two undead scientists. With a dull clunk, the hose snaked loose. Both zombies slipped, falling to hands and knees at the base of the stairs. As they began to stand, Anna raised the baton, readying to swing when, behind, she heard footsteps. Running.

  “Get back!” Avalon yelled, sprinting towards her. In her hands was the gloriously welcome sight of a Colt .45.

  Anna pushed herself flat against the wall as Avalon, still running, fired two shots. Both missed. The scientist skipped to a sudden halt, while the zombies staggered upright.

  Avalon fired again. Another two shots. This time, she didn’t miss.

  Chapter 23 - Political Immunity

  Australian National University

  “I need to change,” Anna said looking down at her gore-splattered hands and now-ruined, barely worn, clothes.

  “I have clothes in the lab, come,” Avalon said.

  “I was thinking aloud,” Anna said.

  “And I have gloves,” Avalon said.

  “Gloves?”

  “For us to wear as we examine the bodies,” Avalon said. “We must learn how they were infected.”

  “Bitten, I assume,” Anna muttered. Her head was throbbing, but so were her arms. Oddly, her teeth were as well, pulsating in time with her rapid heartbeat.

  “Where’s the fifth?” Avalon said.

  “The fifth?” Anna asked. “There was another student?”

  “I sent them to sleep. They were infected, how?” Avalon asked.

  Anna, still running on adrenaline, was finding it hard to understand the scientist who was conducting half the conversation in her head. “You mean people don’t spontaneously become infected?”

  “Indeed. Or I hope they don’t. It is possible the virus could mutate, becoming airborne.”

  “I thought you said it wasn’t a virus,” Anna said.

  “Don’t be pedantic,” Avalon said. “This way.” She began leading Anna back towards her lab. “Three zombies, one staged suicide. So how did those three become infected?”

  “Where’s the fifth zombie?” Anna said. Reflexively, she drew her handgun. “This didn’t work, must be jammed.”

  “Must it?” Avalon asked, taking it from her, and quickly ejected magazine and spare round.

  “You know firearms?” Anna asked.

  “I know how they work,” Avalon said. “They’re remarkably simple. It’s baffling their development took so long. Propellant, tube, trigger, bullet. Point, pull trigger, move on. Simple. Boring.” As she spoke, she’d dexterously dismantled the pistol. “There’s no firing pin. Where did you get it?”

  “Oswald Owen gave it to me.”

  “He’s the fat idiot with no indoor-voice?”

  “My exercise-deficient colleague, yes,” Anna said.

  “I don’t like him,” Avalon said, as they reached the lab.

  Anna locked the glass doors after they entered. “Grab your notes, and we’ll leave,” she said, turning to watch outside.

  “In five minutes,” Avalon said, taking a syringe from a box. “Give me your arm. I need some blood.”

  “Why?” Anna asked, turning around.

  “To finish an experiment,” Avalon said. “Quickly. The work is important. More important than ever before.” She pulled up Anna’s sleeve and jabbed the needle in before the politician could protest. “The firing pin was removed,” Avalon added. “The fat man gave you a broken gun.”

  “Maybe he didn’t know,” Anna said. “What are you doing with my blood? Is that the weapon?”

  “Not all weapons fire projectiles,” Avalon said, bending over her lab table. “Get some plastic gloves. There’s a box on the workstation. And you wanted clothes. The suitcases are against the wall. Blue and red. Blue is Leo’s. Take anything you want from the red.”

  Anna tugged off the windbreaker, and ran the tap in one of the deep sinks, enjoying the feel of water on her hands as her brain slowly processed the nightmarish last thirty minutes.

  “Despite our most recent experiment, the pen is mightier than the sword,” Avalon said. “Brute strength and bullets end battles, but information doesn’t just end wars, it prevents them. You’re immune.”

  “I’m sorry? That’s what you were doing, checking if I was immune?”

  “Check the back of your neck,” Avalon said, in another of her skip-ahead replies.

  Anna raised a hand, and it came away wet.

  Avalon took the Colt .45 out of her pocket, slipped on the safety, then walked over to a tower of first-aid kits stacked near the suitcases. She brought them over to a bench. “Sit and don’t move.”

  Anna sat. “I didn’t notice,” she said. “I didn’t feel it. Okay, I felt that. I’m immune? How certain are you?”

  “Certainty doesn’t have gradations,” Avalon said. “One is, or one is not. And I am.” She affixed a bandage to the back of Anna’s neck. “I’ve cleaned, glued, and bandaged the wound, but you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  When Anna changed her t-shirt, she saw the back drenched red. With that, the last of the adrenaline was banished. “We need to get back to Parliament House,” Anna said, sitting down again.

  “No, we must discover how my students were infected. Drink this.” She held out a bottle she’d taken from a fridge.

  “What is it?”

  “Protein. Sugar. Water. Some fats.”

  Anna sipped. “Tastes like vanilla. Almost like a milkshake.”

  “It’s the powder from the ice cream machine. They had far more than is healthy in the storeroom. You brought a gun with you, so you’re familiar with their operation, yes?”

  “I’ve been with Tess to the firing range.”

  “Tess?”

  “A police officer. A friend.”

  Avalon held out the Colt .45. “Then take this. But be careful,” she added, stuffing her notes into a bag.

  “Be careful because it kicks like a jealous kangaroo?” Anna asked.

  “Be careful because it’s Leo’s,” Avalon said. “He gets mad when his things get broken.”

  Five minutes later, they were once more in the stairwell, standing over the corpses of the dead students.

  “I’m sorry,” Anna said.

  “You can’t be, because it wasn’t your fault,” Avalon said. She held out a pair of disposable gloves. “Put those on and remove that fire hose. We need to go upstairs and see where they died. You can be angry,” she added as they picked their way over the corpses. “You can be aggrieved. You can be upset. Annoyed. Frustrated. Betrayed. But you can’t apologise, because this wasn’t your fault. But it was someone’s.”

  “Because the virus was made,” Anna said as they climbed the stairs and made their way along the corridor.r />
  “And because Mel didn’t commit suicide,” Avalon said, pausing in the doorway to the office-turned-dorm. “Wait out here.”

  Anna lingered in the doorway, glancing up and down the corridor, while Avalon went inside, prowling left, then right, occasionally out of sight. The scientist paced, crouched, peered, and Anna simply wanted to sit. She stepped back, intending to lean against the wall, before an ache from her skull reminded her of the bandage, the wound. Instead, she stepped forward, through the doorway, and into the room.

  The offices along this corridor had been subdivided by thin walls which the students had removed, extending into the neighbouring four offices. They’d found armchairs and cushions, tables and ornaments, even fabric to hang around their mattresses. More rugs and throws had been hung on the walls, until the zombies had torn them down, leaving only a few scraps of cloth on the bolted ceiling-rail.

  A water cooler had provided them with drinking water, while a stainless steel sink had been bolted beneath the window. The zombies had torn that down, too, and knocked free the waste-water pipe the students had drilled through the wall.

  Avalon turned around. “Outside,” she said.

  Anna stepped back into the corridor.

  “It was murder,” Avalon said, following her outside. “Murder by infection.”

  “Are you sure?” Anna asked.

  “Mel was immune, which is why she was hanged. The other three were deliberately infected. There is a syringe inside. Crushed, unfortunately, but there is no doubt what it contained.”

  “Under the circumstances, I suppose not,” Anna said.

  “They would have been sedated first,” Avalon said. “I would imagine the compound was in their food. Something given to them. A gift of some sort by the killer. A shame, since their pantry is well stocked with junk food. Your gun has no firing pin.”

  “You think Oswald Owen killed them? Why?” Anna asked. “But… but… no. Leo and I were locked in the Geoscience building with a sentry who’d been infected.”

  “He was? Why didn’t you say?” Avalon said. “The fat idiot is targeting Leo and me.”

  “But why?” Anna asked.

  “I don’t know him,” Avalon said. “How could I identify his motivations?”

  “I mean, how?” Anna said. “Or, not how, but… I don’t know. Who knew Mel was immune?”

  “She did. So did I, Leo, and my other assistants. You and your politicians knew. Leo told you yesterday.”

  “Oswald was hanging around outside here, yesterday after that meeting,” Anna said. “And when I came to find Leo, Mel was outside waiting for someone. I thought she was going on a date or something.”

  “Impossible. She was seeing Lilly.”

  “One of the other students? Then she certainly wouldn’t have conspired in their deaths. So Oswald persuaded Mel to steal a sample of the virus. Gave her some food laced with a sedative by way of payment. He infected the sentry at Geoscience Australia, and then came back here to infect the students.”

  “Something alcoholic,” Avalon said. “Something they would consume here, in their dorm. Meaning they could be infected here. Found here by me when I went to look for them. There’s a very old bottle of brandy in there.”

  “An octagonal bottle?” Anna asked, stepping forward to look. “That’s identical to the one Oswald was drinking outside Parliament House, and identical to one found at the suicide of one my colleagues.”

  “Suicide by zombie?”

  “No, Aaron slit his wrist. And that was… no, that had to have been suicide. But it was the same type of bottle. Very old. Hundreds of years old. It’s… it’s no coincidence. Aaron be connected to this, too, but I still don’t know what this is.” She looked up and down the corridor. “Oh, I wish Tess was here. I’m sure we’re missing a lot. This way. We’ll find a different way outside.”

  “All of this began a few hours after he was informed we could make a weapon,” Avalon said. “Why doesn’t he want a weapon? Why would anyone not want to stop the undead?”

  “You met the Guinns, didn’t you?” Anna asked. “The brother and sister who flew to America?”

  “Twice,” Avalon said. “Once in Nanaimo, once again in Thunder Bay. Why is that relevant?”

  “They know something,” Anna said. “They don’t realise it, and I don’t think they know the extent of it. They suspected a conspiracy behind the outbreak. That’s it!” She stopped and turned to the scientist. “That’s why you and Leo were targeted. You said to us all that it was manufactured. Created. Artificial. That’s why Owen wants you dead, because he worried you’d identify where it was created, and ultimately, lead us to him. Do you have paper and pen?”

  “Of course. Why?” Avalon asked, opening her bag and withdrawing a notepad.

  “I’m sending you to the airport. My father is… well, he’s probably in a plane on his way to the coast. Tess and Captain Hawker might have gone with him, but my assistant, Hoa Nguyen, will certainly be there. Give this note to her.” She handed Avalon the gun. “And take this.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get Leo, and to deal with Oswald.”

  “Then you’ll need the gun.”

  “No worries,” Anna said. “I’m getting an army.”

  Chapter 24 - The Blood-Red Flag

  The Bunker, Parliament House

  Having given Avalon her car, Anna jogged back alone, keeping to the footpath and cycle lanes. Utterly anonymous, one more anxious face in what was a growing crowd, though everyone else was staying close to their billets. They looked like the off-duty workers, woken early, or kept awake by the troubling rumours spreading as fast as the unauthorised radio stations could broadcast. She caught a few snippets of those from the open windows and doorways where people gathered, listening, waiting, watching the sky. And behind the radio, on a lower volume, the sound of black-and-white trench-warfare came from the national TV channel, the only station still broadcasting.

  Parliament House was busier, too, though here the newcomers were in uniform, a fifty-fifty split between those in camouflage and those in black utility gear. More reassuring still was the welcome sight of the Minister of Defence, Ian Lignatiev.

  “Ian, I am so glad to see you,” Anna said. “Over here, please, in private. We need to talk.”

  She led a confused Ian away from his equally confused soldiers. “It’s Oswald,” she whispered. “He tried to kill the scientists. One of Avalon’s lab-assistants stole infected samples for him. He used those to infect the rest of her team, and the sentry at Geoscience Australia.”

  “Oswald? Are you sure?” Lignatiev asked. “That sounds… no offence, but far more effort than is usual for him.”

  “I don’t think he’s working alone,” Anna said. “So who, here, do you trust?”

  Ian briefly turned to look at the mix of conscripts and Special Forces. “Not everyone,” he said turning around again. “Why is he doing this?”

  “Because some people knew about the outbreak before it happened,” Anna said. “You know how Avalon said the virus was made, manufactured?”

  “And you think it was made by Oswald?”

  “He’s just a small cog in a big international machine,” Anna said. “But he’s worried the scientists will continue an investigation which will lead them to him.”

  “There has to be more evidence than that,” Lignatiev said.

  “Not really, not yet,” Anna said. “And it doesn’t matter because attempted murder is enough reason to detain him. Once that’s done, we need to release an official statement. Rumours are spreading. I’m worried what’ll happen at shift-change. Crowds might gather, becoming restless, unruly. Add in zombies, and we’ll end up worse than Melbourne. We need to get Dr Smilovitz out of the Bunker, and Oswald in handcuffs.”

  “The prime minister is in there, too,” Ian said.

  “Oh. Of course,” Anna said.

  “Can you go in and get them?” Ian asked. “I’ll send a team down with you, bu
t they’ll wait outside until the civilians are clear. Although, perhaps that’s not wise. Not safe.”

  “No, it’s fine,” Anna said. “It’d be quicker if I go in.”

  “Thank you,” Lignatiev said. “Let me redeploy the soldiers I don’t trust.”

  The politician walked over to a trio of black-clad soldiers, and spoke quietly to a woman whose face was mostly scars, and whose web-harness-vest was festooned with as many knives as guns. In any other circumstances, at any other time, had Anna seen her, she wouldn’t have just crossed the street, but moved to a different state. The trio broke up, quickly moving among the soldiers, ordering some away, while others fell in, close to the door.

  “They’ve been told there’s been an undead incursion and are going to the suburbs as reinforcements,” Ian said. “These others, I trust. Major Kelly will enter with you. I’ll remain up here with reinforcements.”

  The scarred woman gave Anna a brief nod. “Are you armed?”

  “Ah, no.”

  “You should be,” Major Kelly said. “Sir?”

  Lignatiev reached into his bag and withdrew a small nine millimetre in an equally small holster. “Ankle holster is best, yes?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Kelly said, taking holster and gun from Lignatiev. She ejected the magazine, checked the load, reloaded, and handed it to Anna. “Do you know how to use this?” Kelly asked.

  “Point and shoot,” Anna said.

  “If we hear gunfire, we’ll enter,” Kelly said. “Otherwise, we’ll remain outside until you leave. There are two essential hostages. The prime minister and the scientist. Do not speak to anyone else. We don’t know who has been compromised.”

  “Of course,” Anna said. She bent to affix the ankle holster. Leading the way, she headed down to the Bunker.

  After Major Kelly had disarmed the solitary sentry outside the airlock, Anna went in, alone. She paused in the corridor outside the sliding doors leading into the communications centre. Dr Smilovitz stood next to one of the headphones-wearing camouflaged conscripts, tapping at a tablet. On the big screen, the map had been replaced with a wall of code, changing as fast as Smilovitz could type one-handed.