Two more of the living dead had staggered out onto the road, both wearing the same black uniform as that creature by the house. Again, they were between him and the van. He raised the shotgun, sighting down the barrel, but he couldn’t risk taking the shot.
To his right, a single-wire fence marked a plot that had been cleared for development. The ground looked flat, at least for fifty metres. That would be more than far enough. He ran across, and easily climbed over the fence. He walked sideways, one eye on the zombies, one eye on the ground. Any hope that single-wire would halt the creatures was dashed as they walked into it. The wire grew taut, then snapped, and they continued on, into the vacant plot.
Pete raised the shotgun. He had a clear shot now, but he knew to wait. He braced his feet, raised the weapon, marked his target, and lined up his shot. The zombie. A creature. A monster. A ghoul. A demon. Think of it as anything, but not as the person he’d been a few hours before. A man, no older than Pete, with different dreams but surely with similar desires. Over the last week, that desire would simply have been to survive another day. But this man before him hadn’t survived. He’d been infected. He’d turned. And now, he was one of them.
Pete fired. The slug slammed into the left shoulder, spinning the zombie around, but it staggered on. He chambered a new round, and fired again, this time ripping the head clear from its neck in a fountain of blood, bone, and gore. Pete stepped back, refusing to look, to think, to throw up, or to run. But he dearly wanted to. It was all he could think, a single word, a chant, repeated over and over, a siren song of run, run, run.
He forced the shotgun back to his shoulder. Watching, waiting, focusing on the ragged gash across the zombie’s forehead so he didn’t have to look into those lifeless eyes.
He fired.
The gun clicked.
He pumped the ratchet, and pulled the trigger again, and still nothing happened except that the zombie had staggered another step closer. Pete wasted a second looking at the safety before he realised he was out of ammunition. The zombie was three metres away now, and he could hear its teeth snapping.
He shifted his grip. Holding the shotgun by the barrel, he swung the gun like a club as the zombie lurched forward, hands clawing at the air. The trigger guard slammed into the creature’s outstretched arm. Bone snapped, and its arm bent, but the zombie staggered on. Pete swung again, but he rushed the blow, and this time it had no force. The zombie’s broken arm still did. The swipe from its twisted limb knocked the shotgun from Pete’s grasp. He jumped back a pace, looking around for a weapon, but there weren’t even any decent sized rocks. He stepped back. There was escape. He stepped back again. He could run, in any direction he chose. But he couldn’t leave Corrie behind. Again, he looked for a weapon. His hands went to his belt, his pockets, and the hitman’s gun he’d utterly forgotten he was carrying. He dragged it free, and remembered that it wasn’t loaded. Walking backwards, barely staying beyond the zombie’s thrusting, clawing grasp, he dragged a magazine from his pocket, loaded the gun, and fired into chest and then head until the gun was empty and the zombie was on the ground.
And then he ran, but back to the van.
It took a minute to make the radio call, and he didn’t remember what he said. Afterwards, he sat motionless, in his own sweat, his limbs like jelly. He wanted to stay there, to never move again. But he couldn’t. Shivering, he picked up the pistol from the passenger seat and ejected the spent magazine. He loaded one of the fresh. Hand trembling, he found the safety, slid it on, and stepped back outside. Placing one foot in front of the other, picking up his pace with each step, he listened to the voice still commanding him to run, and sprinted back to Corrie and Qwong.
But their battle was over, too.
Corrie stood in the street, outside the house, shotgun in her hands. Dead zombies close to her feet.
“I heard shooting,” she said.
“I’m not bitten,” he said.
“Me neither,” she said. “I guess that’s how we’re going to say hello from now on.”
“Were there survivors?”
“Some,” Corrie said. “Tess is checking on them. Did you radio in?”
“The army is on its way,” he said.
“Good. Because we need to search the entire town for the rest of the orchestra, and that’s a job I’d rather leave to the professionals.”
But the inspector had other plans.
“I spoke to the survivors,” Qwong said. “They were searching the houses when the zombies arrived. They scattered, so there might be others who survived, and there are some locals here among them.”
“What do you mean, when the zombies arrived?” Corrie asked.
“Hopefully nothing,” Qwong said. “The kid doesn’t speak English, and my Mandarin’s been gathering dust since my mother died. I think he means appeared. Corrie, you go left, I’ll go right, Pete, you stand on guard here. Corrie, knock on the door. If you hear voices, get them to open the door. If you hear anything else, yell.”
Pete watched Corrie move to the next house, glanced over at Qwong who’d already reached the neighbouring door to the left, then sprang around when he heard the door behind him open. Three teenagers came outside. Two women, one man. Their clothing was stained with dirt, sweat, and fear, but each clutched a broken table leg in steady hands.
“Hey,” Pete said.
The young man gave him a brief nod
“Police?” the taller of the two young women asked.
“I guess so,” Pete said, glancing down at his windbreaker. Pete turned back to the road. He was unsure how much a barrier language would be to conversation, but there was nothing reassuring he could say to the teenagers, and nothing they could say that would reassure him.
Corrie had moved on to the second house to the left, Qwong to the third house on their right, when a low drone filled the air. The helicopter buzzed into sight a moment later. As it hovered overhead, Pete scanned the sky for others, but there only seemed to be one. Pivoting clockwise to avoid the telegraph pole, then anti-clockwise to avoid an overgrown acacia, it made a juddering descent toward the road at the junction, just a little way beyond Corrie. Before it touched the ground, four soldiers jumped out, and the helicopter sprang back into the sky far faster than it had descended.
The lead soldier gave a brief nod of recognition as he ran towards Tess Qwong who, in turn, was jogging towards him. The other three soldiers came to take up positions on the road in front of the house. Pete recognised Bramley, and she gave him a resigned grin, but then returned her attention to scanning for danger.
“I didn’t find anyone,” Corrie said, coming back to his side. “Didn’t hear anyone either.” She glanced at the teenagers and said no more.
“Qwong’s coming over,” Pete said.
“We’re going to search the town,” Qwong said. “Captain Hawker says another helicopter is on standby if it’s needed. Hopefully, it won’t be. We’ll need a way of getting these people back to Broken Hill. Fastest way will be the vehicles they came here in. Can you two find me ten cars between here and the police van? Check the fuel tanks. Keep an ear out for survivors, and for the undead. Meet back here in an hour.”
“Got it,” Corrie said.
“This one’s fine,” Pete said, closing the car door. “Keys were on the seat. And it has enough gas to reach Broken Hill.”
“Petrol,” Corrie said. “Although I think that one’s diesel. You need to learn the lingo if we’re staying here.”
“I’ve learned wombat, dingo, and redback, that’s a good start. How many survivors do you think they’ll find?”
“Not sure,” Corrie said, moving to the next car. “There were eleven in that house. Hopefully none are infected, but no point wishing any more problems on ourselves than we already have. We killed three or four undead teenagers at the shop. Maybe more. It’s hard to be sure, and harder to know whether they’re locals or musicians. Not that it matters who they were last week or where they came from, except that
we need to know how the infection reached this town.”
“Talking about that, did you recognise the uniform?” Pete asked.
“What uniform? The Chinese kids were dressed the same as the Australians.”
“No, the black uniform that zombie outside the house wore. When I went back to the van, there were two more zombies wearing something similar. I didn’t pay much attention at the time, but maybe the uniform will tell us where they came from.”
Realisation swept across Corrie’s face. “That wasn’t a uniform,” she said. “It was biker-gear. High-end stuff. Not leather, but unnatural fibres and machine-made polymers.”
“They were members of some super-wealthy MC?”
“Maybe. More likely, they stole the clothing sometime since the outbreak. If it’s designed to protect you from a hundred-kilometre-an-hour tumble from a bike, it should be bite-proof.”
“Turns out it wasn’t,” Pete said.
“No. But maybe you’re right, maybe that does explain how the infection got here. You can cover a lot of distance on a bike, but not when you’re infected. Though there’s no reason why they should have ridden here. Maybe they came in a van.”
“If that clothing was stolen new,” Pete said, “that means they got it from a city.”
“Probably. They saw the scenes of Manhattan on the TV and thought somewhere remote would be safer. That doesn’t explain how they got infected, though.”
“We should go tell Captain Hawker and Inspector Qwong.”
“We should finish checking these cars,” Corrie said. “We only need two more, then we’ll have enough, and then we’ll tell Tess. I’m not sure how much help it will be. And I don’t know that it matters. The zombies are here, and that means they truly are everywhere.”
Chapter 23 - Sanctioned Looting
Broken Hill
25th February
“Checkmate,” Bobby said. “Again. You’re really bad at this.”
“Bobby!” Liu said.
“Sorry, Mum. Sorry, Pete.”
“No, you’re right,” Pete said. “I am pretty bad. How many moves was that?”
“Seventeen,” Bobby said quickly. “I think I could have beaten you in ten. Do you want to play again?”
“You haven’t got time,” Liu said. “And nor do we. Go on, now. Doctor Dodson is waiting for you. We’ll be back in a few hours, and you can play again then.”
“Beat him again,” Bobby said quietly. He grinned, and ran off.
“He’s doing okay, don’t you think?” Liu asked.
“All things considered,” Pete said.
“All things,” Liu said. “Yes. We better get to the road before Tess comes back.”
Pete stood, looking at the chessboard, table, and chairs set up on the edge of the runway. He wasn’t sure which soldiers had left them there, because there were none in sight. There had been when they’d returned to Broken Hill the previous evening. More still at three a.m. when Pete had woken up, screaming. He’d gone outside, intending to pace the runway, but it had been as busy as day. He’d returned to his folding bed in a corner of an office. The nightmare hadn’t returned, and when he’d woken, and finished a hasty military breakfast, the airport was deserted.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“The soldiers? In town,” Liu said. “Setting up checkpoints and barricades.”
“Did you speak to them?” Pete asked. “I guess I’m wondering if there’s been any real news.”
“Some,” Liu said. “But how do I know it’s not rumour? There’s something wrong with radar, with air traffic control, and with the satellite networks. They think more infected planes crashed without anyone realising. And I think they’ve known about it for days. That’s why they wanted to move people back to the cities, to the coast. To stop things like Menindee from happening.”
“Ah. Okay, that makes sense.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” Liu said. “But does that mean it’s true, or is it just a sensible conclusion someone drew from all they’d seen and heard? It’s like this talk about a joint Pacific command.”
“A what?”
“Apparently, we’re working with New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, and a dozen other places between here and Japan. Bring order back to the Pacific, and then we’ll save the rest of the world. That’s the story, but is it true, or wishful thinking? There’s another that the ambassador to Beijing is now in Guam, and running the U.S.’s fleet in the Pacific. That can’t be true as well. And why the ambassador to Beijing? Why not an admiral? And why Guam and not Pearl Harbor? Or Washington? I don’t know what to believe anymore.”
“I used to feel that way with the internet,” Pete said. “All that comment and gossip headlined as fact. None of it ever made a difference to my life. Not really. But I didn’t think I’d ever miss it so much.”
“Dinkum oil,” Liu said.
“What?”
“It means isn’t that the honest truth? There’s one thing I don’t think the soldiers were lying about, some of them disappeared last night.”
“Disappeared? You mean they went AWOL?”
“Along with their armoured car and some portable artillery. I don’t know what portable artillery is, but I’m more interested why anyone’s bringing artillery in to fight zombies. I suppose it’s a case of someone in Canberra deciding that since the army has it, they better use it.”
“How many soldiers left?”
“Four,” Liu said. “I suppose they wanted to be with their families, but it’s a worrying sign of what’s to come. Ah, it looks like we are late.”
Corrie, Inspector Qwong, and Private Bramley stood on the airport side of the new checkpoint, while a pair of refrigerated trucks stood on the other, a quartet of armed sentries stood in between, their attention mostly on the town.
“Did those musicians we rescued leave Broken Hill?” Pete asked.
“On the last train,” Qwong said. “And that left about two hours ago.”
“How many people are still in town?” Liu asked.
“That, I don’t know,” Qwong said. “A better question is how many people are still left around and about in the outback. We’re still not sure who half the infected in Menindee were, or how they got there. I’d say at least a few hundred people have stuck around. Maybe as many as a thousand, but maybe not. Are you up to speed with what we’re doing?”
“Collecting food,” Pete said.
“Partly, but mostly I want the people who are still here to see us collecting it,” Qwong said. “We’ll make a record of the non-perishables left in the restaurants and cafes, and we’ll take anything frozen or chilled that hasn’t spoiled. We’ll shut off water and power as we go. If you see any people, tell them to head to the hospital. They’ll get food and water there, and work, but don’t tell them that. Anyone who’s staying is going to have to earn their keep. And if they don’t like it, we’ve a train due in a couple of days.”
“I’d like to pop home and pick up some clothes for Bobby,” Liu said.
“We can manage that,” Qwong said. “Corrie, you’re with Josie and me. Pete, you’re with Liu. Hang on.” She walked over to the truck, and took out a shotgun. “Here.”
This time, Pete didn’t hesitate in taking it, though he did hesitate when he looked for somewhere to stow it within the cab of the second refrigerated truck.
“Is the safety on?” Liu asked. “I don’t want my head getting blown off if we go over a pothole.”
“It is,” he said, but checked anyway.
“And that pistol of yours?”
“Unloaded,” he said, patting his pocket. “Seemed easier than checking every five minutes.”
“You need a holster,” Liu said, her hand unconsciously moving to the holstered Glock-22 given to her by Tess from the police armoury. Like Pete and Corrie she now wore a police windbreaker, though that wasn’t a badge of authority, only a way of indicating they weren’t looters to all the new soldiers now in the town.
> “I hate this,” Liu said, turning on the engine. “All this having to think differently. Remembering I’m carrying a loaded gun when I’m around Bobby. Then remembering that so is everyone else on that airfield. Then remembering that it’s utterly essential and likely to be the norm from now until forever. The world’s changing, and it’s still changing, though some things are changing back. Here, you better take the map.” She took it from the dash and handed it to him. “You should learn where places are. That’s if you’re staying.”
“I’m sorry?” he asked, looking up from the map before he’d even found Airport Road.
“Didn’t you want to go back to America?” she asked.
“One day,” he said. “Of course. There’s someone I’d like to see again.”
“Olivia, you mentioned her.”
“I did? So much has happened in so short a space of time, it’s hard to keep it all straight.”
Ahead, Qwong stopped her van in the middle of the traffic-free road. She, Corrie, and Bramley climbed out, but Qwong waved Liu and Pete to stay in their vehicle. The inspector took the others into a small shop. A moment later, they came out again.
“Nothing there,” Qwong called out. “Looted.”
“Where are we?” Pete asked, looking at the map.
“Patton Street,” Liu said. “Here.” She pointed at the map. “But if you had a chance to return to America, would you go?”
Surviving the Evacuation (Book 16): Outback Outbreak Page 21
