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

“Only the soldiers,” Anna said. “I’ll have your team, Tess. If any of us has to fire a shot, we’re in deeper trouble than a few soldiers could save us from.”

“I disagree,” Hawker said.

“So do I,” Mick said.

“But it’s my decision,” Anna said.

“We’ll have to leave some of the food behind,” Mick said. “The Gulfstream wasn’t designed to be a cargo plane.”

“Which is a perfect excuse to eat some now,” Anna said.

“There’s food?” Tess asked.

“Of a sort,” Hawker said. He held out a cereal bar.

“Ah, processed food, how I’ve missed you,” Tess said, tearing the wrapper off. She took a bite and began to chew. She stopped. “Why are you all staring at me?”

“What’s your gastronomic assessment?” Leo asked.

“It’s food and I’m hungry,” Tess said.

“To think you grew up in a restaurant,” Mick said. “What would your mum say?”

“That there’s too much sugar, and not enough cinnamon. Why the quiz?”

“The bar was made yesterday,” Anna said. “A group of mums had turned a school bake-sale idea into a kitchen-table biscuit-by-post business. Just before Christmas, they took over a large warehouse near the railway. They had the kitchens, and the packaging machines, all on-site. We don’t have storage space for raw ingredients, so cooking them is essential, and this factory was ready to go. If it works, we’ll expand their operation.”

“Tastes good,” Tess said, taking another bite. “I’d say expand away.”

“Take another look at the packaging,” Mick said.

“Plain and sensible,” Tess said. “Oh, it says it costs a dollar. We’re using the old currency again?”

“That is currency,” Anna said. “The bars should last for a year, and so will be sold, and can be traded, at a nominal rate of a dollar.”

“We’re replacing bank notes with biscuit-bars?” Tess asked.

“They’re a lot harder to forge,” Mick said.

“If people are starving, they’ll eat the bars,” Anna said. “But if they’re not, they’ll trade them. This establishes a baseline for bartering. We can’t use the old currency, and we can’t waste the resources in printing new notes, or the electricity in running a digital currency. Not yet. Until then, a two-hundred-and-fifty-calorie oat-bar is worth a dollar. So your daily calorie requirement should cost ten dollars, but people can thrash out the specific costs and wages for themselves.”

Tess nodded. “Money you can eat, but which truly won’t last forever? The future is now. Where’s Dr Avalon?”

“Working,” Leo said. “Or sleeping. Probably both. I better find her.”

“We best find everyone,” Anna said.

“On it, ma’am,” Hawker said. He and the scientist hurried away.

Tess took a final bite, finishing the oat-bar. “Does this mean we’re okay for food, nationally?”

“The days of local surpluses will soon be over,” Anna said. “The canning factories are running at full capacity, with the bottleneck now in steel. We have more bakeries than we can equip, so I think we’ll begin canning pre-cooked meals and stick a price on those, too. It’s what happens next month which is giving me a migraine. We should be approaching harvest-time, but there are zombies in the fields, and double the population in the cities. Over winter, Leo’s worried the oceans might be too radioactive to fish. But there’s an idea for hydroponics through the cold months if we can sort out the electricity supply.”

“This country could do with a diet,” Mick said. “Starting with our prime minister.”

“Don’t you dare say that to him,” Anna said.

“Someone should,” Mick said. “It’s a three-hour time difference to Perth, and we’ll be flying about a hundred kilometres an hour slower than the sunrise. We should land as the day’s first light is shining on the wrong side of the right desert. Let’s get you aboard Oz-Force-One, Anna.”

“Dad, please don’t call it that,” Anna said.

A month ago, the Gulfstream V had been a USAF VIP transport, with space for fourteen passengers, each in their own bed-comfortable lounge-seat. From Dr Avalon’s headphones came a muffled roar of drums and guitars as she drowned her ears in music while alternating between writing in a notebook and tapping away on a laptop. Bruce Hawker had brought one soldier with him, Sergeant Nick Oakes, who had a vaguely familiar face which was currently throwing curious looks towards Clyde, who sat by the door. Sophia and Bianca were catching each other up. Elaina was dictating the lyrics of Australian folk songs to Blaze. Zach was making a bid at hyperinflation by methodically chewing his way through a crate of the edible banknotes wedged next to his seat. Hawker was up front with Mick, Anna was reading, Toppley was writing, and Leo had closed his eyes.

This morning, this flight, felt different to yesterday’s and to all the days prior to that. It was as if they had turned a corner. Tess didn’t even dare hope the last bomb had now been dropped, and so the recovery could truly begin, but they were now talking in terms of weeks and months, not hours and days. They were planning convoys and bakeries, rather than walls and patrols. They were worried about steel for canning, not graves because of starvation. They worried about a political challenge, not a coup, and drunken pilots, not the undead. Yes, things were changing. Perhaps it was the uniforms, or the lack thereof.

Team Stonefish had lost their camouflage, and were now in shirts and blazers, slacks or skirts. Zach looked younger, as if he were on a school trip. Bianca, perhaps because of the jewellery, looked considerably older. Sophia looked more professional, while Clyde, somehow, looked less. Toppley, by contrast, still wearing camo, looked even less like the infamous photos from the Christmas news bulletins.

“No gunshots,” Tess said as she buckled her seatbelt. “There were no gunshots last night.”

“Hmm, sorry?” Anna asked.

“Don’t mind me,”