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

Avalon said, opening a crate. “You know I hate it when you talk like that. You’re implying some omnipotent hand has written our destiny.” She held up a bullet. “When it’s patently obvious to any student of recent history that fate holds a gun in both hands while loudly dictating her terms. Zachary, strip the magazines from those carbines. Leo, load.”

“It’s Zach, not Zachary,” he said.

“Zach has to be short for something,” Avalon said. “Since Zachariah has an absurd number of syllables, it must be Zachary. Why are we not moving?”

“Clyde?” Tess called, and moved to the bench row behind the driver. Oakes was stationed at the rear-right, standing upright and sheathing his bayonet having cut away most of the already shredded roof. Toppley was in the mid-left, with Hawker sat next to Zach, whistling the outback waltz as his hands patiently loaded a magazine.

“Are you a soldier, sir?” Tess asked of Luis Magaia as the bus began to move.

“A teacher,” Luis said. “These clothes were all that were available.”

“You were a school teacher here in Inhambane?” Tess asked.

“No one here is from here,” Luis said. “We are all refugees, and those who lived here became refugees elsewhere during the evacuation to Madagascar.”

“A lot of those children were injured,” Clyde said. “How’d it happen?”

“A stray shell from one of the pirate ships hit a van of cooking oil,” Luis said. “They are the survivors. Turn left here at the end of the runway. There is only one road.”

As they drove south, through the hastily fortified city, Tess developed a mental picture of how it must have been a month ago. A sleepy tourist town of pastel-painted cafes and small hotels, none more than three storeys high. Colonnades supported balconies overhanging the narrow road. It wasn’t so much a city in decline as an ancient one in retirement, enjoying the tranquil calm of the near-ocean life.

Their navigator was correct: there truly was only one road through the city. Not because it was so impoverished it couldn’t afford more, but because every alley and side road was barricaded. Every ground-floor window, of store, cafe, or home, was blocked. Every rooftop was linked to the next with a new, rickety walkway built with whatever could be salvaged from inside. On those roofs were people. Civilians. Refugees. Passengers for an airlift yet to arrive. Some were armed with machetes and improvised spears, but only a handful held long-arms. Almost all of them watched the sky, looking for the rest of the planes they’d been promised were coming.

“What happened here?” Tess asked.

“Where does that story begin?” Luis replied.

“Start with the end,” Clyde said. “Who’s attacking us?”

“Morto-viva,” Luis said. “From Pretoria. From Johannesburg.”

“Jo’burg’s about a thousand kilometres southwest,” Clyde said.

“They follow the refugees,” Luis said. “We lost Maxixe yesterday. The town due west, across the river from Inhambane.”

“What’s our destination?” Clyde asked.

“The bridge over Rio Mutamba,” Luis said. “The river creates this peninsula. The bridge is the defensive line. Captain Adams wants to hold the bridge. It is thirty-five kilometres away.”

 “E.T.A, thirty minutes,” Clyde said. “Hold the bridge, hold the peninsula. Keep the zoms from the town.”

“Until the planes come,” Luis said. “They are coming, yes?”

“Yes,” Tess said. The properties grew less numerous as they reached the edge of the small city. “It’s just going to take a little longer than you hoped. Is Captain Adams from the warship?”

“She is in charge today,” Luis said. “So many have been in charge. So many went to Madagascar. It is why I came here. Why we all came here.”

“Where did you come from, sir?” Clyde asked.

“Myself? Maputo,” Luis said. “A student told me of the evacuation to Madagascar. I told others. But the harbour was full of so many. The entire city expected to leave. We waited until refugees arrived from South Africa. They said Durban had been overrun. We decided to copy the South Africans and drive north. Myself, my students, their parents. We came here and found it empty. Sailors had taken to their dhows, while everyone else had been taken to Toliara.”

“In Madagascar,” Clyde said.

“Yes,” Luis said. “And here, at sea, east of Tofo Beach, there were ships. Freighters under the protection of warships. Those were the refugee ships. They were waiting here, but the refugees were waiting in Maputo. The ships went south. It was not a noble deed,” he added, with weary admission. “If ships arrived in Maputo, the refugees would wait there for a ship rather than copying us and coming north, bringing the infected with them. Colhes o que semeias.”

“Eventually, we all reap what we sow, mate,” Clyde said in partial translation and complete agreement. “Madagascar was a refuge for Mozambique and South Africa, too?”

“So everyone thought,” Luis said. “But everyone in Tanzania, Kenya, and Somalia thought the same. Word spread over the radio, and must have been heard in Zambia and Zimbabwe, Namibia and even Niger, because planes arrived. The infected arrived. So did the pirates. Chinese. Americans. South Africans. Somali. Madagascan. Some wanted to steal food and fuel so they could remain at sea, aboard their ships. Others, the warships, they desired only to sink one another. It was madness. The large ships, the cruise ships and freighters which had carried the refugees, remained in Madagascar, in harbour, while the sea ran red with more blood than has been spilled in these waters for five hundred years. But os mortos had arrived by air.”

“The zombies arrived here on planes?” Tess asked.

“In Madagascar,” Luis said. “Earlier groups of refugees had moved inland. They were attacked. Infected. The island was lost from the inside. The refugees re-boarded the ships. Mortos were among them. The ships pulled anchor, and now they float at sea, ships of the dead, while the lost souls march on us from South Africa.”

“Inhambane is in