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

the second wave of nuclear missiles, fired by the nuclear-armed submarines which had obeyed their last suicidal orders for mutually assured destruction.

Though neither she, nor even Anna, knew the full extent of the damage, not all shipping would have been lost. Not all ports would have been submerged. Only a fraction of a percent of global sea capability now remained, but planes still arrived. Fewer than a week ago, and each with only a few hundred refugees aboard. Where the group aboard this 747 came from was a mystery. They traipsed towards quarantine in the repurposed hangar. After twenty-four hours, they would be transferred to a work detail in the city. But not the unaccompanied children.

Tess followed the sound of a guitar to the now-dormant baggage-claim hall, where a terrifyingly sinister man was singing a song about a kangaroo-sled team.

“And the ’roo bounced,” he sang. “And the sled bounced, and the driver went… Everyone?”

“Flying!” about half of the children chorused.

With a flourish, Dan Blaze strummed a finish. A young woman in a matronly pink cardigan stepped forward. “Thank you, Mr Blaze,” she said with pedagogical professionalism. “Line up, children. In pairs, please. We’ll take you to the boarding school where breakfast awaits. I think you’ll find the bus a smidge more comfortable than a sled pulled by kangaroos.”

Blaze strummed a quick chord, gave a bow, and made his way over to Tess.

When they’d first met, he’d been a convict ten minutes short of a long drop. Withdrawn. Watchful. Wary. The very definition of bad news walking. But in reality, he was a Canadian children’s entertainer, universally recognised across the English-singing world, at least among his core audience of under-tens and their parents. Blaze had found himself playing nurse aboard a medical mercy-flight from Vancouver, and then miscategorised as a convict in Darwin. Tess had saved him from a last dance, and he’d saved her, and helped save Anna and civilisation, during the attempted coup.

“G’day, Dan,” she said. “Where are the kids from?”

“Lombok,” he said. “Should have landed in Darwin, but the runway was full. They were redirected here. Arrived in the middle of the night. Came in on the plane before that one,” he added, gesturing outside. “That’s two planes since midnight.”

“What happened to their parents?” she asked.

“They knew this could be the last plane out,” Blaze said. “They stayed behind so more kids could board.”

She nodded. “Who’s the teacher?”

“She said she’d been sent by Ms Nguyen,” Blaze said. “They’re going to a refugee camp at a race course we’re now calling a school. We’re storing up problems for later.”

“For at least a generation,” Tess said. “So let’s hope we have many future years in which to regret what we did today. Where’s Sophia?”

“In the main quarantine centre keeping watch with the soldiers,” he said, tapping his holster. “I said I’d go help after these kids were collected.”

“Leave that to the soldiers,” Tess said. “I’ve a job for you both. Grab Sophia, and meet me up in the lounge.”

She paused a moment to watch the last of the refugee children heading away. Civilisation had fallen, but they might just have caught enough pieces to patch it back together.

In the early days of the outbreak, while she was still in Broken Hill, most of Canberra’s police officers, along with the military units including Parliament’s ceremonial ADF guards, had been dispatched to the outback and the coast, to deal with rising numbers of the undead. Yes, in part they had been sent where calm minds, steady hands, and familiarity with a firearm could assist the most. But their deployment was also a deliberate policy of Erin Vaughn and Ian Lignatiev’s to remove loyal obstacles before their attempted coup.

Now, with few personnel, a patchy electricity supply, and with the data-centres powered down, there was little purpose in operating out of the AFP headquarters. Even so, she’d rather the sign on the first-class lounge read something more professional than Team Stonefish. But that was the name Zach had picked for their original crew of conscripts, and it had stuck.

She opened the door, and entered an armourer’s workshop.

“G’day, Commish,” Elaina Slater said. “Is there more trouble?”

“No more than usual,” Tess said. “Where did these rifles come from?”

“They were aboard the plane which came in from Lombok with all those kids,” Clyde Brook said. “Should have been left with the defenders, but must have been overlooked. Twelve crates of AKMs dragged out of storage.”

“Stored in a sandy pit below ground,” Teegan Toppley added. “It’s a disgrace keeping weapons like this.”

“We’re triaging them,” Clyde said. “Stripping and rebuilding, but we’ll leave the cleaning to whomever is issued with them. Reckon we can salvage seventy percent.”

“I thought I told you lot to get some sleep,” Tess said.

“Day-time sleep is notoriously bad for one’s mental well-being,” Bianca Clague said.

Bianca claimed to be a pastry chef from Adelaide, but her accent and jewellery, worn in addition to her new uniform, said she’d been more likely to own the patisserie than work there. In her late forties, she still wore a wedding ring, though she never spoke of her husband.

Clyde Brook did speak of his husband, and his son, but never his more distant past. From his easy familiarity with a rifle, he’d spent it in uniform. Tess guessed he’d been Special Forces, but Clyde would only ever say he was now a charity worker.

Teegan Toppley’s own reinvention put those two to shame. The one genuine convict in their group, her sentence for tax evasion was part of a complex plea-deal where she’d been allowed to return to Australia for cancer treatment. The press report during her trial described her as being a forty-six-year-old jewel-thief, but the police report listed her as a fifty-nine-year-old arms-dealer. That report had been sealed, and the deal agreed, because it also contained details of best-forgotten