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

Clyde picked up a rifle. “These should work after a quick clean, but if you’re keeping a tally of how many we’ve found, Elaina, wait until we’ve given them a test-fire.”

“Oh, no. I wasn’t writing that,” Elaina said. “I was making notes on everything that happened.”

“To whom?” Bianca asked.

“To everyone,” Elaina said. “We’re conscript-cops, aren’t we? Cops solve crimes. The zombies, the coup, the nuclear war, that’s the crime to end all crimes.”

“In my experience of human nature, there will never be an end to crime,” Toppley said. “It is an immutable law, and almost certainly one of Dr Dodson’s rules.”

“Fair dinkum,” Elaina said. “Let’s call this a war crime, and hope history will record it as the last in our lifetimes. I was never a big of a fan of mysteries, and this one is only half solved.”

“You’ve landed in the wrong job,” Bianca said.

“Better than being one of those conscripts sent by ship to America,” Elaina said. “The pilots on the plane which just landed said those ships lost power due to the EMP and are dead in the water out in the Pacific.”

“Not all of them, surely,” Bianca said.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Clyde said. “We’re here because we’ve all got to help each other, and the government decided conscription was the best way to get it done.”

“Not me,” Toppley said. “I’m here because Commissioner Qwong saved me from a short drop and a shallow grave. To think it took two weeks for society to collapse to the point where an oil refinery administrator decided to play Madame Guillotine.”

“I know,” Elaina said. “I can’t believe everything fell apart so quickly.”

“Oh, no, don’t misunderstand me,” Toppley said. “I’m shocked it took a whole two weeks. I should have been serving my sentence in Darwin, but a wrong turn by the wrong bus driver, and I was nearly hanged. The commissioner, and Dr Dodson, flew us to Brisbane just as it was hit by a tsunami. An hour earlier, we’d have drowned. Instead, we landed here, met you, and we all stopped the coup.”

“As much as that’s a cautionary lesson I’ll teach as soon as I get back in the classroom,” Elaina said, “your story can be summed up as a bureaucratic mix-up. Sorry, Teegan.”

“Ah, how the once-mighty have fallen,” Toppley said.

“We’re no different,” Elaina said. “There but for the slip of a pen, we could be aboard one of those conscript-ships. The satellites went down soon after the outbreak in Manhattan, and the internet didn’t last much longer. For three weeks, everyone’s been cut off from each other. Very little information is coming in, but I still want to know how it began, and how we know it’s over, and how was it linked to the zoms?”

“Before the outbreak, a plane landed in Broken Hill,” Bianca said. “Commissioner Qwong was a police inspector. Mick Dodson worked for the Flying Doctors, and Anna Dodson taught there, before she was elected to parliament. The plane is the key. It was a business jet, belonging to Lisa Kempton. Aboard was… oh, who was it? Ms Qwong said he was a carpet salesman, but he must have been a spy.”

“He sold carpets,” Clyde said. “The bloke’s name was Guinn. Don’t think the boss ever told me what his first name was. But he did just sell carpets. He was a trick, a trap, a feint, a dupe. Unimportant, except that his sister worked in the outback up by the dingo-fence. From what the sister told our boss, and what she told me, the point of sending this Guinn bloke down to Oz was to get the plane, and pilots, out of America.”

“But the cartel were waiting for the plane,” Bianca said.

“Exactly,” Elaina said. “They kidnapped the pilots, and tortured them. Do you think it was like in the bunker? Skinned alive?”

“That’s what the boss says,” Clyde said. “But she’s certain that it was the work of a different torturer.”

“So there’s more than one skin-peeler in Oz?” Elaina asked. “Well, that’s a piece of news that’ll keep me up at night! The Guinns flew north, on that plane, yes? All the way to Canada, and that’s how we knew a fight-back was underway up there. It’s how those scientists, Smilovitz and Avalon, ended up in Canberra. But what happened to the siblings next?”

“They’re still stuck in the frozen never-never,” Clyde said. “Word is, it wasn’t them who were supposed to be on the plane, but a squad of Special Forces.”

“Like you?” Bianca asked.

“I’m just an aid worker,” Clyde said.

“And I’m just a jewel thief,” Toppley said.

“I wish I was still a teacher,” Elaina said. “The plane went north, the commissioner and Dr Dodson came to Canberra to report in, and then… well, then we met Ms Qwong, and we found Senator Aaron Bryce’s body in the burbs a few hours later. Do you think Senator Bryce really committed suicide?”

“Probably, but maybe not,” Clyde said.

“Probably not, but maybe,” Toppley said.

“Surely he wouldn’t have,” Bianca said.

“That’s that cleared up then,” Elaina said. “He is, or he was, Sir Malcolm Baker’s son-in-law, right? And as a senator he worked with Anna Dodson in the cabinet.”

“After most of the politicians had been sent to Tasmania,” Bianca said. “Those who weren’t killed. The commissioner is sure some were murdered.”

“Right, making it easier for Erin Vaughn and Ian Lignatiev to seize power.”

“Those two’s families had been kidnapped,” Bianca said.

“Which is no excuse,” Elaina said. “Not for mass-murder and complicity in a nuclear war.”

“Oh, they can’t have known about that,” Bianca said.

“You hope they didn’t,” Elaina said. “But someone did. Vaughn and Lignatiev sent most of the politicians away from Canberra and killed the rest. They sent away most of the soldiers and police, too. Which is