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

along the shores of Table Bay on the far side of the Cape of Good Hope. In Table Bay lay the most famous prison in the world: Robben Island. She remembered that much from the practical lesson in history, equality, and hope as she and her mother had watched apartheid crumble on their restaurant’s rabbit-eared TV set: her mother had cried for a week and smiled for a month.

“Mr Renton, ask the commander to make her way along the bay to Simon’s Town,” Adams said.

“Is that where the naval base is?” Tess asked.

“Yes. It’s an obvious place for the convoy to seek refuge if they arrived yesterday,” Adams said.

Avalon tapped her screen, which relayed a wide-angle view of the city’s southern suburbs. “A selective blaze swept through that suburb. Those shadows suggest more fires half a kilometre north, and a kilometre to the northwest. To the west is smoke. Something is still smouldering.”

“A cooking fire?” Tess asked.

“The smoke haze is too large,” Avalon said.

“More zombies on the shore,” Adams said, watching the live-stream. “But fewer than Inhambane. Fewer shipwrecks, too.”

“They’re small craft,” Tess said. “Are they fishing boats?”

“Pleasure yachts,” the captain said. “The shape of the hull gives it away. Larger ships would have been drafted into the evacuation fleet.”

“Some zoms, but no barricades on the shore-road,” Tess said, looking at the images, trying to piece together a picture of what had happened. Windswept. Storm-rinsed. Sun-baked. Ash-coated. Soot-dusted. Dotted with charred ruins. Filled with walking corpses now following the sound of the copter’s rotors. Compact townships. Low-rise apartments. Single-storey homes. Neatly planned subdivisions with scrubby brown gardens. A junction blockaded by cars, ringed by corpses.

“Hold there, Commander,” Adams said. “Rotate ten degrees port. Thank you.”

Leo pulled up a still of the battlefield. “Over a hundred dead zoms,” he said.

“They’ve fallen in a ring around those vehicles,” Tess said. “It’s not a last stand, is it? The survivors fought a battle, won, and left. Why fight there? Can you bring up the footage shot before this?”

“I can,” Leo said, tapping at the keyboard. “How much do you want?”

“Just that cluster of apartment buildings. Okay, now go back a bit more to the housing development. Lots of low buildings. One-storey, built close together. A township, I think. Yes, there it is! Huh.”

“What is it?” the captain asked, coming to look.

“Very few cars,” Tess said. “Almost none. It’s low-income housing, but there should still be some privately owned vehicles. After those zoms were killed around that junction, no one went to salvage the vehicles from the barricade. The survivors of that battle didn’t need the wheels. Where exactly is this?”

“About level with the mid-point of the bay,” Leo said.

“Leo, can you find the footage of the road nearer to Cape Hangklip? Yep. Good. Stop. There aren’t any cars at all. There’s nothing south of here until you reach penguins, so where are all the cars?”

“Which cars?” Leo asked.

“All the cars from Africa,” Tess said.

“They went east to join the evacuation,” Adams said.

“Not everyone on this continent,” Tess said. “Not everyone could have heard of the evacuation. Not everyone would believe it. Some people would have fled south. Not everyone would have had the fuel to reach this far, but surely some would.”

“It would be counter-instinctual to leave the security of one’s home,” Avalon said.

“Human beings are nothing if not counter-instinctual,” Tess said. “That’s about a thirty-kilometre sweep of road, with no cars at all. Some would have had the fuel to reach this far, but no further. There should be at least one. But there’s not.”

“They must have stalled on the far side of the city,” Leo said.

“Sure, exactly, but why?” Tess said. “I was thinking about Port Elizabeth. If the radiation stopped people from getting this far, did it stop them from leaving, too?”

“That is your answer,” Adams said, pointing again at the live-stream. “It’s a plane.”

Technically, it was an engine and one quarter of a wing, which had torn through a subdivision of beachfront villa-houses.

“Where’s the other wing?” Leo asked, tapping at the keyboard, and bringing up a still of the charred engine.

“It wasn’t attempting a landing,” the captain said. “The plane was shot out of the sky. An A380, I think. Have the commander continue south to the naval base with all haste. I believe the majority of the local population departed here soon after the outbreak. If they used all lanes of the highways, no vehicles would be able to travel in a counter direction. Who would wish to come to a city everyone was fleeing? The roads to the north would become clogged with out-of-fuel cars. That’s why there are no cars here.”

“The convoy were driving earth-movers,” Avalon said. “Stalled traffic would be a temporary impediment to them.”

“Wait, there!” Tess said, now watching the live feed. “In the shallows. Another wing. Two engines, jutting out of the water. Two engines on one wing, so it was a different plane.”

“You said it yourself, Commissioner,” Adams said. “There’s nothing south of here but penguins. The planes arrived first, hoping to land, hoping for salvation, but bringing the infection. They were shot from the sky. Ah, but that wasn’t caused by a crashed plane.”

The helicopter had moved on, and was now hovering above three large craters. Offshore, the seawall had been breached in two places. On land, the craters were surrounded by debris and charred ruins.

“That’s the naval base,” Adams said, checking her charts. “Yes. I’m certain.”

“The craters are too small for a nuclear detonation,” Leo said. “The diameter is about twenty metres on the smallest, thirty on the largest.”

“Eighteen to twenty-six metres, at most,” Avalon said.

“Commander Tusitala, return to the ship,” Adams said, speaking into the radio herself.

“Are we going ashore?” Tess asked.

“Not here,” the captain said. “Do you