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

“Under orders of their lead mercenary, Kelly,” Clyde said. “I reckon Vaughn gave her a rank in the army so she could do what she wanted, go where she needed, deploy people how best it suited her. She gave the boss a particular assignment, a particular street to clear. But we got lost. If we hadn’t, I reckon we’d have walked into a trap.”

“So it was good luck we got lost and found Bryce’s body,” Bianca said.

“No, it was sheer chance we didn’t walk into an ambush,” Clyde said. “But if we hadn’t found that body, someone else would. Bryce was famous enough to be recognised. Either his death was staged to look like suicide so there’d be no investigation, or he killed himself there, knowing his body would be discovered by someone who wouldn’t cover it up. But my money is on him being murdered, and on Kelly being uncertain how much he’d told Ms Dodson. That’s why they decided to kill her next.”

“By locking Ms Dodson in with some zoms?” Bianca said.

“I think it was the cartel-killer, Kelly, who did that,” Clyde said.

“But Vaughn and Lignatiev share responsibility,” Elaina said. “We rescued Ms Dodson.”

“And Oswald Owen,” Bianca said.

“Well, I don’t trust him,” Elaina said, “even if he is the prime minister now. We tracked down Lignatiev, and then Kelly, and finally Vaughn. But not Sir Malcolm.”

“He’s a despicable man, always printing his lies and hate,” Clyde said. “He’s a grub who’ll have crawled into a deep, dark hole to hide. Let’s hope he died there.”

“Even if he didn’t, the coup’s over, isn’t it?” Bianca said.

“Is it?” Elaina asked. “I hope it is. I hope that the last bomb has been dropped and now we can rebuild, but I still don’t understand why it all happened. I suppose that’s what I’m trying to figure out.” She put the notepad down. “An outbreak in Manhattan. Planes spread the infection all over the world. Europe and North America collapsed in days, and few places last much longer. Australia nearly collapsed. Then came the bombs, and the tsunami which wiped out the east coast and most of the Pacific Islands. New Zealand, Australia, Papua, and a few other islands, we’re all that’s left with however many refugees made it here before the collapse. Sixty million? Eighty? Even if it’s a hundred million, there were seven billion three weeks ago.”

“Some of them will still be alive,” Clyde said, picking up the crowbar. “And so are we, so open the rest of the crates and let’s see what we can salvage.”

14th March

Chapter 1 - While the Lights Are On

Australia National University, Canberra, Australia

“You have a week to find Sir Malcolm Baker, Tess,” Anna Dodson said. “If you can’t, someone else will take over the investigation while you accompany the scientists to Britain and New York. We must stop the cartel. I hate to think what kind of new world people like that would create. But if we don’t stop the undead, none of us will have any kind of future.”

“The parliamentary session will be broadcast at six p.m.? Then I’ve time to grab some sleep first,” Tess Qwong said. She stood, stiffly, wincing from the exertion of the night’s hunt for last of the traitorous conspirators and the previous day’s battle to stop the attempted coup. As she rested a hand on the back of the chair, the room dimmed. The lights had gone out. The fan had stopped humming. Outside, Anna’s RSAS bodyguards had both raised their weapons, while in the corridor, people had stopped, turning to one another in baffled confusion.

Her weary limbs, bruised muscles, and cut skin forgotten, Tess quick-stepped to the light switch on the wall. She flicked it once, twice, and a third time in desperate hope, but the lights wouldn’t turn on.

“Stay here, Anna,” she said, opening the door. “You two, protect the—”

But before she could finish, the lights flickered back to life.

“Just a power surge, Tess,” Anna said, her words edged with desperate relief. “We’ll be jumping at shadows next.”

“These days, the shadows jump back,” Tess said. “I’ll see you this evening.” She nodded to the two soldiers, and hurried past the academics and conscripts busily converting the School of Medical Sciences into a fortified pharmaceutical lab, but paused when she saw the Canadian scientist, Leo Smilovitz. He’d donned a lab coat, though beneath it he wore a tool belt with a handgun in a holster designed for a power drill, a dosimeter dangling next to a flashlight, and a rock-hammer looped between the screwdrivers.

“Do you know what’s going wrong with the electricity?” Tess asked, keeping her voice low. “The lights are on, but the fans aren’t.”

“There’s been a power cut,” Leo said. “The generators have kicked in, but the lights are on a different circuit to the air-con. The lights come on to aid an evacuation of the building. The fans don’t, in case the reason for a power cut is a fire.”

“A power cut? And you don’t know why the electricity’s down?” she asked. “Could it be an EMP?”

He tapped his lethally loaded tool-belt. “I’m on my way to find out.”

“Don’t leave the building,” she said, and hurried outside.

Zach, the teenage conscript she’d drafted as her driver, snapped to a rigid attempt at attention, giving her an equally rigid salute so as not to be shown up by the second pair of RSAS soldiers standing guard by Anna’s car. But those two soldiers weren’t looking at him, or at Tess. Both had their hands close to their triggers, while their eyes scanned opposite halves of the horizon.

“Zach, try the radio,” Tess said, opening the passenger door. “Quick.”

“What’s wrong, boss?” he asked.

“Just turn on the radio,” she said, looking up at the