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

the northwest of the peninsula, yes?” Tess said. “Tofo Beach is thirty kilometres east, on the northeast of this peninsula. To the east of Tofo Beach is the sea, and a hundred kilometres of ocean filled with zombie-ships?”

“Yes.”

“To the west of Inhambane, there’s the river, and then another shore-facing town, that’s also been overrun?” Tess asked.

“Maxixe, yes,” Luis said.

“And to the south, there’s a few bridges separating us from all the zombies from the capital of Mozambique, and from South Africa?”

“Oh no,” Luis said. “There is also a ford.”

Chapter 7 - Warriors

Rio Mutamba, Mozambique

They left the city, and its smouldering cooking fires, behind, but the estuary-river kept them company as they followed the dusty road south. After a kilometre of burned and abandoned cars, licensed to five different countries, they reached an under-defended barricade. A military-green truck was parked next to a single-storey L-shaped home. On the roof of the truck’s cab stood a woman with a rifle, while a man stood on the flat roof of the house. Perhaps they were the property’s owners, perhaps they were looters, but they ignored the bus as it sped south.

To the east lay barren summer-parched and mining-ruined scrub. Here, the horizon was broken with an occasional palm instead of an acacia; otherwise it was achingly similar to Broken Hill. Zombies had been right at home in the outback and the same would be true here.

“Bridge ahead, Commish,” Clyde said.

“No, not this bridge,” Luis said. “Keep going until the mines. You will see the mines. Then you will see the bridge.”

The two-lane, hundred-metre-long, beam-bridge crossed a muddily sleeping estuarial bite the river had chewed from the peninsula. A tank was parked on the northern bank, with a self-propelled howitzer stopped at the bridge’s midpoint. Except the cannons were aimed north, not south. Their treads were snapped. They hadn’t been parked, they’d been abandoned.

“What type are they? I think I recognise them,” Tess said.

“From a history book,” Clyde said. “The tank’s a T-54.”

“Soviet?” Tess asked.

“Originally,” Clyde said. “The howitzer is a Gvodzika. That’s still in production but I didn’t think anyone south of Ethiopia operated them. From the direction of their guns, they broke down during a retreat.”

The drivers were gone, and no one was now left to guard this bridge. Nor the next. But someone still fought on the peninsula. As the wind changed, from ahead, she caught the sound of gunfire.

Scrub turned to scree, and then to slag as they drove south, and into terrain torn asunder by strip mining. Those machines had been re-purposed, driven onto the hundred-metre-long bridge. There, they had joined ancient tanks to become steel barricades at either end of the bridge, with a third barricade halfway along. The bridge ran nearly north to south. Below, the river had shrunk to a meandering twenty-metre-wide path, surrounded either side by a semi-lush, flood-plain forest. To the northwest, she could make out a patch of semi-cleared land that would have been farmed in any other year. But now, the people were gone, except from on the bridge itself. The sound of gunfire marked a last desperate defence against the undead.

Even as they braked, a woman jumped from the giant crane which mostly blocked this end of the bridge, and ran towards them. She wore jeans, a sweat-stained shirt, and a blood stained hijab, and carried an old rifle with a very short magazine.

“As-salamu alaykum,” she said. “You have guns? Proper guns?”

“I guess we do,” Tess said. “How many do you need?”

“All of them,” the woman said.

Tess, Clyde, Hawker, and Oakes followed the woman back onto the bridge, leaving the scientists, Toppley, and Zach to continue loading magazines.

Next to another stalled history-book tank was an achingly modern crane. Her closest friend, Liu Higson, had a husband whose job was to fly such machines between the mineral deposits of the world. From him, and those occasional investigations which led her to outback mines, she recognised it as being used to haul even larger pieces of mining equipment into place. But here, it reminded her of more recent stories of the Canadian army using earth-movers as tanks with which to crush the undead.

With caterpillar treads as tall as her head, its height certainly offered safety from the undead for the people on top. Women. All bandaged, blood-stained, and battle-weary. That crane must be an impromptu aid-station. But their young guide was running too fast for Tess to ask questions. Too fast for her to keep up.

She fell behind the men, angling across the roadway, slowing her pace, taking in the bridge, the bodies, the bullet casings, and the open grassland below.

The undead must, previously, have reached the far end of the bridge, but been driven back. No, not driven. Because the undead would never retreat. They arrived in waves. One wave had been obliterated, but at the cost of tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition. Another wave was being held halfway along the bridge, at the second barricade, this one made of four bulldozers parked abreast. On top were more civilian-clad defenders. Eighteen, perhaps twenty. It was both their number, and their age. About half wore a hijab, none wore uniforms, while every single one of them was a woman.

“Come. Up. Go. Fight,” their guide said, pausing at the ladder at the rear of the right-most caterpillar.

“Oakes, take the left. Major, on the right,” Hawker said. “Commissioner, with me,” he added, crossing to the next bulldozer along.

Hawker was already firing when she reached the top. Tess took one look at the bridge, and the irregular ranks of the hellish legion beyond. “Here,” she handed her carbine to their guide. “And take these.” She pulled out her magazines. “Hold the line, Colonel!”

She jumped back down and ran, pushing through the pain from her hip, sprinting back to the bus.

“Keep loading!”