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

“How bad is it?” Avalon asked.

“Five hundred zombies,” Tess said. “More coming. About three minutes from over-running this bridge.” She drove, foot to the floor, around the crane. “They’re at the base of the dozers. About twenty women with rifles as old as those tanks are just about holding them at bay.”

The bus bounced over corpses. Metal shook. The bus juddered even after she’d braked, barely a metre from the rear of a bulldozer.

“Load the carbines, and get them passed out to the defenders,” Tess said, grabbing a carbine and slotting a loaded magazine into place.

“No,” Avalon said. “That’s too inefficient. We will load weapons for those in these two central bulldozers. Injured people are atop that rear-most crane. We need to get them aboard, and get them loading magazines, too. Mr Magaia, Zachary, fetch them. If required, we’ll use this bus to retreat at least as far as the end of the bridge. Well?” she added. “Why are you waiting? Leo, grab those magazines. Tess, the guns. Zachary, drive back and fetch the wounded.”

“Do it,” Tess said, loading another carbine, jumping off, and then climbing up to the dozer on which their guide, Hawker, and two other women shot the undead.

“Loaded guns,” Tess said, placing a carbine next to each of the local women, before raising one of her own. She lowered it without firing a shot, but not for the lack of a target. Four hundred metres lay between this central barricade and the barrier at the bridge’s western shore, and each square metre contained at least one of the undead. Pushing. Shoving. Scrumming towards the thick-steeled construction machines. Some in rags, some in uniform, some already mutilated from a previous fight.

With the locals now armed with fast-firing carbines, and with her soldiers firing precise single shots at an almost fully automatic pace, a wall of aimed lead was being flung into the slow-moving horde. But not all shots were kills. The sound of gunfire was too great to call out targets. Gore sprayed from shoulders, arced from backs, pulsed from chests, but nothing other than a headshot would stop these living demons.

The bulldozers, if they had fuel, could advance, but only if each advanced at the exact same speed. Anything else would open a gap through which the undead would squirm, slither, and slide behind their lines, trapping them, and dooming the children still trapped in Inhambane. But the corpses were beginning to form an uneven mound in front of the dozer’s giant blades. While the giant mining machines shook under the pressure of the surging death-wave, they weren’t moving, but they would soon be swamped, overwhelmed.

“Magazine!” Hawker called.

“Loaded rifle!” Tess replied, holding out her carbine.

“Good on ya, but we need mags!”

“On it,” she said, and jumped back down.

Over the sound of flesh beating steel, of lead smashing skull, and the whisper of air concertinaing from dead lungs, came the bus’s struggling growl. Zach was behind the wheel, and spun the bus in a brake-squealing, rubber-burning, dust-flinging, one-hundred-degree turn. Aboard were four women, and Luis Magaia.

“There’s two more ladies up on the crane,” Zach said. “But they’re unconscious. I need Clyde and Nicko to help get them down.”

“They’re safe where they are for now,” Tess said. “Zach, Luis, take the loaded rifles to dozers. Bring back the empties. Mags and guns. Ladies, hi. We’re loading,” she said, ripping the lid from an ammo crate.

Each M4-carbine was shipped with a magazine, but unloaded. Magazine-less carbines now littered the floor, while only one crate of guns had yet to be opened. She grabbed a carbine, and ejected the magazine.

“We know what to do,” a woman said. “The bullets go in… this way around.”

It wasn’t a question, and was followed by instructions in Portuguese, directed at the two women with bandaged legs, then in Arabic for the woman whose head and neck were covered in gauze.

Tess followed those same instructions, and began stripping the remaining carbines of their magazines.

“Are you New Zealanders from the battleship?” the woman asked, not taking her eyes from the magazine.

“Australians from the plane,” Tess said. “My name’s Tess Qwong.”

“Laila Tembe,” the woman said. Her accent was learned-from-a-tutor British that Tess associated with the old black and white English movies her mother had loved though never understood. Laila wore a brown hijab and a white shirt, both splattered with blood. The left sleeve had been cut away so that a bandage could be affixed to her arm. “I was bitten an hour ago,” Laila added. “Please be ready.”

Tess undid the flap of her holster. “Understood.”

“Thank you,” Laila said. “The planes have arrived for the children?”

“I’m sorry, no, not yet. We thought all the refugees had already been evacuated. My pilot’s fetching more planes, but it’ll be another day before they arrive.”

“A whole day?” Her face tightened, but her hands didn’t stop moving. “Then we must fight for one more day. Just one more.”

The magazines now removed, Tess began loading. “What happened here? Where are the tank drivers?”

“Gone,” Laila said. “All the others left.”

“They crossed the bridge?

“They went south,” Laila said. “Across other bridges.”

“More please!” Zach said, jumping aboard.

“Help yourself,” Tess said.

“This is something, isn’t it?” Zach said, and sounded genuinely enthused. But he was gone before Tess could formulate a reply.

“Better to be excited than terrified,” Laila said, as if reading Tess’s thoughts. “My brother was the same.”

“Did he make it this far?” Tess asked.

“He’s alive. Waiting for a plane,” Laila said. “But he was caught in the fire. The explosion, as was Saleema.” She nodded to the woman whose head and shoulders were bandaged.

“Explosion?” Tess asked. “What happened here?”

“We fought. We fight. Some gave up,” Laila said. “More were here. A rear guard. They