Life Goes On by Tayell, Frank (large ebook reader txt) 📗

bags,” she added. “He said there were only two mercenaries here, but I don’t trust him further than I can kick him.”

“Charming,” Baker said.

“On it, Commish,” Clyde said, and left the room, Toppley in tow.

“Elaina, Mick, watch the door. Baker, put your hands on the snooker table,” Tess said, drawing the Taser. “You were going to tell us how the outbreak started.”

“See, you don’t even know what questions to ask. You want to know about the sisters.”

“Your sister started the outbreak?” Zach asked.

“Not my sister, the sisters,” Baker said. “In my firm, a kid like you moves his jaw without permission, I’d fly you out to the Gibson, and tell you to walk home.”

Zach took a reflexive step backward, then smiled. “Except I’m the kid with the gun, and you’re covered in your own—”

“Tell me about these sisters,” Tess cut in.

“They’re Colombian,” Baker said. “Spent some time in India. Some in Russia. I heard enough stories about them to know most of them are myths. But Colombia is where I met them. Horrid little place. Right on the Caribbean. Spitting distance of Aruba, and they kept their house next to a coal mine. You’ve heard of designer drugs?”

“Which ones?” Tess said.

“All of ’em,” Baker said. “Those synthetic amphetamines which started appearing a decade ago? They invented them. In their labs. Are you starting to get the picture?”

“Keep drawing,” Tess said.

“The story is probably a myth, but it goes that their father was one of those big cocaine bosses. The bloke had a private army, hippos, the works. He was another Cold War narco-baron who took money from the Yanks and then from the Commies, and then got murdered by a lieutenant. His daughters, the sisters, fled. Either to India or Russia, depending on whom you believe, and found a chemist who could make them something as good as cocaine but which didn’t require the farmland. Paid off the local judges, police, and coast guard, set up some international franchises, moved back to Colombia, and got their revenge. Killed thousands if you can believe it, which I didn’t, until I met them.”

“What’s this to do with the outbreak?” Tess asked.

“The labs!” Baker said. “Strewth, no wonder they nearly won, with cops like you. The chemists! Don’t you see? Their business model was to own the competition. To own the monopoly for every narcotic. They wanted an empire. But there was no way for them to be legitimate emperors— sorry, ladies, I mean empresses, under the existing framework of international judiciary. They needed a planetary reset. Hence the apocalypse.”

“The zombies,” Tess said.

“I didn’t know anything about that,” Baker said. “I’ll take a chance, any chance, but what they created was sheer insanity. All they said was there’d be a limited nuclear war. Couple of hundred nukes, taking out the military bases in the Northern Hemisphere. They had agents in the governments of all nine nuclear powers.”

“I thought there were five,” Zach said.

“Plus India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea,” Elaina said.

“You know what you want to ask next?” Baker said. “How did they get someone inside North Korea? Rumour goes they ran the pill-factories Kim used back in the day, back when he had his diplomats flogging a high to make hard cash.”

“Get to the point or I’ll start looking for rope,” Tess said.

“You’re not one for small talk, are ya? The nuclear war was supposed to destroy the armies. But it wasn’t their plan. A bunch of politicos in the north cooked it up. The sisters were just taking advantage of it. Oz was supposed to be their backup, their fall-back in case something went wrong, which it obviously did, because as crazy as those sheilas were, they’d not have unleashed zombies onto the world.”

“What do you mean Australia was their backup?” Tess said.

“What, you need me to spell it out?” Baker said. “They wanted a friendly government here after the Northern Hemisphere became a radioactive swamp. They wanted a friendly leader. I said Aaron, obviously. The kid was soft, but he’d have done. They preferred Lignatiev. Had something on him. Never knew what. Vaughn was supposed to be deputy. But I reckoned I’d have got Aaron to the top spot in a year or three. He was a good kid, in his way.”

“What did the sisters have on you?” Tess asked.

“Nothing I couldn’t fight in court,” Baker said. “That’s why they took me to Colombia. They skinned my secretary alive in front of me. She didn’t travel with me. They kidnapped her. Drugged her. Smuggled her out on my own plane! Then skinned her alive in front of me. Not them personally. They had a bloke do it for them. Australian, he was.”

“On the strength of that, you planned a coup rather than went to the police?” Elaina asked.

“No. Of course not,” Baker said. “They provided other lessons. Demonstrations. They had it all planned. They gave the summary of seven court cases going on in seven different countries. Told me to pick one. So I did. They made a call, and the judge threw out the case. Bloke who beat his wife to death, right when she was making a video call to her sister. The evidence was indisputable.”

“You can’t be serious,” Elaina said.

“Just a second,” Tess said. “All of this makes a wonderful campfire yarn. None of it saves you from a firing squad.”

“The names will,” Baker said. “You’re not going to execute me until you’ve got them all. All the judges, the lawyers, in every country. It’ll be like Nuremberg again, won’t it?”

“Nope,” Tess said. “Because it’s just a story that won’t save a single other life. Especially not your own.”

“How about the address?” Baker said, this time with a hint of desperation. “The location in Colombia where they’ll be now, and where they made the