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

when we land, I don’t expect we’ll linger long. Within an hour or two of arrival, I want to be underway.”

She returned to her seat, pulled down the blind, and closed her eyes, trying to remember whether or not the RSAS used the rank of major.

Catching up on a month’s sleep, one snatched hour at a time, she dozed fitfully until finally woken by a tap on her shoulder.

“Mick wants you up front, Tess,” Colonel Hawker whispered.

She followed him back to the cockpit where, below, the ocean’s surface was slick with wreckage and oil, and an occasional floating hulk. Ahead, smoke rose from a forested shore.

“Where are we?” Tess asked.

“About fifty miles due east of Madagascar,” Mick said.

“That’s Madagascar?” she asked. “I… I had an image in my head. Lush trees. Wide beaches. Sweeping rivers. Bright-coloured animals. Not carnage.”

“There’s nothing on the radio,” Hawker said, retaking the co-pilot’s seat.

“But people must be down there,” Tess said, trying to pick out details between the smoke. Smouldering shipwrecks dotted the beach. The fires had spread to the buildings ashore, creating a giant plume which merged with that rising from the blazing inland forests.

“Zoms,” Hawker said. “Down there. Has to be zoms. Nothing on the radio yet.”

“It’s worse than I was expecting,” Mick said.

“It’s worse than Brisbane,” Tess said.

“Twice over,” Mick said. “But I was thinking about alternate runways. We’re about an hour from Inhambane. We’ve enough fuel to hunt up and down the coast, but not to return home.”

“No worries,” Tess said, since the time to worry was before they’d taken off. “I’ll get everyone up and ready.”

In the cabin, only one blind was up. Leo was looking outside, but his hand still wrote. Avalon typed in time with the fast music leaking around the edge of her headphones. Clyde and Zach played cards. Elaina and Bianca were engrossed in a hushed, smiling debate. Oakes was reading a thick paperback whose cover was mostly an explosion.

“Everything okay?” Toppley asked.

“We’re above Madagascar,” Tess said. “We’re about an hour out from the airport. Take a look out the window. Get your gear packed. Get ready to leave the plane.”

A few more blinds went up.

“Strewth,” Elaina said.

“Vile,” Zach said.

“Dante’s Inferno,” Bianca said. “It truly is.”

“Get up,” Clyde called. “Eat up. Wash up. Pack up.”

Tess sat, bent, and tightened her laces, doing her best not to look outside. After Sydney, when she’d been recovering, she’d binged the ooh-pretty-animal nature shows. Madagascar had been a favourite since it could give Australia a run for most bizarre ecosystem in the world. Now, realistically, the aye-aye was extinct. The ring-tailed lemur was gone. The fossa had been wiped out. TV shows about faraway places were nothing but memories.

Korea was gone, and she’d never been. Persimmons were grown in Australia, but her mother always said they never tasted better than fresh from the tree in the safe-house north of Busan where she’d been debriefed after her defection. The world she’d known was past history, and the future of which she’d daydreamed was less real than the smoke clouds now buffeting the plane.

“Are you okay, Commissioner?” Toppley asked.

“First time out of the country for a while,” Tess said. “Couldn’t remember if I’d packed my towel.”

The intercom clicked. “We’ve picked up the beacon for Inhambane,” Mick said.

A muted susurrus of relief shot around the cabin.

“That’s an Anzac-class frigate down there,” Oakes said, looking out the window. “She’s firing her gun.”

Tess turned to the window and caught the glimpse of a freighter-ship, but she couldn’t see the warships.

“That frigate must be our ride,” Tess said. “I thought it was a Canberra-class ship. Someone must have got them mixed up.”

“Who were they shooting?” Elaina asked, as the plane shook.

“Buckle up,” Tess said, following her own advice. Her trepidation grew faster than the smoke below. Oily, dark, thick, swirled by the wind to obscure what looked more like a refugee camp than a war zone, but certainly wasn’t a secure military outpost.

A hard landing was followed by an equally hard deceleration, but before it was over, Hawker came from the cockpit into the cabin. “Perth was wrong,” he said. “There are refugees still here, and they were expecting an airlift. They’re engaged with the zoms.”

“Ah, hell,” Tess said, pulling herself up. “Clyde, Oakes, get ready to help refuel, or fight, and probably both. Bruce, did they say how many refugees?” she added, following the colonel to the door.

“They asked where the big planes were,” Hawker said. “So I’m guessing lots.” Just before he opened the door, the colonel raised his voice. “If they want to take the plane, we’ll let them,” he said. “We do not have sufficient fuel to return home, so we are not killing for the chance to drown in the Indian Ocean. We’ll retreat to a ship, or retreat inland. Bring weapons, food, water. Expect to never come back aboard.”

“You think it’ll be that bad?” Tess asked.

“Let’s find out,” Hawker said, threw the door open, and jumped down. Tess followed.

Smoke, oil, and oceanic salt seasoned a swirling miasma of blood, sewage, and burned flesh. The air reverberated with a thunderclap roar as the distant warship fired her gun. From the south came a muted applause of small-arms fire. Amid the smoke, she saw hints of barricades ringing the runway, but no other planes, and no tall buildings.

An open-top bus sped towards their plane. Duct tape held the cracked windscreen together. Muddy sand covered the pearl-pink bodywork. The sky-blue cloth sunshade above the passenger cabin had been reduced to loose rags, flapping and streaming as the bus sped to a hard halt just shy of the wing.

Oakes was at Hawker’s side, and Clyde was at hers before she’d taken another step.

“Friendly!” Hawker called. “Hold your fire!”

Tess didn’t know if