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

did it. You’re not surplus, and we all feel useless. How can we not? We’re savings tens while knowing, just beyond reach, thousands more are dying every day. Even the captain feels it. We’re going west tomorrow. Leaving the boats and those civilian helicopters, and a small crew, but we’re going west to look for more survivors.”

“Via Colombia?”

“Hopefully. The crew want revenge, and the weapon,” Tess said. “The captain wants to save as many people as she can.”

“To make up for those she’s lost,” Toppley said. “She’s not the only one who feels like that. A rescue ship is on its way?”

“One. At least one, yes,” Tess said. “They should be here in a week.”

“After which, we’ll be leaving Africa forever,” Toppley said.

“For now,” Tess said. “But yes, that’s what I’ll recommend to Anna, but I think she knew it was the most likely outcome before we set out. We have to pull back to Oz, and rebuild before we can rescue.”

“Save our people rather than theirs,” Toppley said bitterly. “That, at least, hasn’t changed since the end of the world.”

“We’ve no choice,” Tess said. “We’re on the brink of extinction.”

“Oh, I know,” Toppley said. “But that doesn’t make it an easier pill to swallow.  Some people will be staying here to look for survivors?”

“To collect any that get to the beach,” Tess said.

“I’d like to stay with them,” she said. “It’s not that I wish to make amends, nor do I seek forgiveness. The past cannot be altered, or forgotten, though so much of it fills me with regret. I would like the future to be different. I’m just ballast aboard that ship. I can be of use here, and I do want to be useful.”

“You think this is where you need to be?” Tess asked.

“I’m supposed to be in a cell,” she said. “Yet instead, I find myself on this most infamous of prison islands. If that isn’t a sign, I don’t know what is.”

Part 4

 

 The Point of No Return

 

The Continuing Diaries of Tess Qwong

24th March

Chapter 25 - Other Rooftops

It’s two hours since we left Robben Island. As the ship slides into its at-sea rhythm, I’m keeping out of the way. With Teegan still in Cape Town, I’m alone in my cabin. I’ve got the second book in Leo’s trilogy to read, and I salvaged a copy of the Dan Blaze DVD from the toy-store. I don’t feel like either. I don’t want to sleep, not just because I’ll miss mealtimes and end up wandering the ship’s gangways and bilges during the middle of the night.

People want there to be patterns. We want there to be connections, and see them in every small coincidence. We ignore the differences and claim the hand of fate, and declare there must be some meaning behind it all. Destiny. A curse. A plot. A plan. Something so far beyond our control we can take comfort that the blame doesn’t lie with us.

So where does blame lie? Nowhere and everywhere. With Sullivan. With me. With all of us, and with none of us, because blame is different from responsibility. Responsibility is easy to place. A cop, a soldier, we do our duty, and our duty puts us in harm’s way. Death is a risk. The responsibility for it can be blamed on our foe. Blame’s that little demon which sits on our shoulders, second-guessing our actions, offering a sapping chorus of what-ifs and why-didn’t-Is. Blame’s the devil targeting our rage outwards and our regrets inward. Blame can help us get through the days after a tragedy, but not the weeks and months and years which follow.

Another city. Another rooftop. Another gut-shot colleague. There isn’t really a comparison between Cape Town and Sydney, but ever since the bullet smashed through the toyshop window, my brain’s been drawing parallels.

Back then, I was at a crossroads in my life. Is that similar to now? Isn’t life always at a crossroads? Things were going well for me, and going better for our investigation. The gang had formed when two dropouts began selling weed and LSD at their old university. Their classmates graduated, and began earning cash, and so did these two as they expanded their client base. They got a taste for money, and wanted more. They wanted real money, so they branched into cocaine. They recruited a couple of blokes who worked at the docks. They skipped out the mid-level distribution, and bought direct from the supplier. In five years, they went from small-time dealers to running the import and distribution for half the city.

There was nothing unusual about them. Nothing special. Nothing to warrant more than a footnote in a true-crime podcast. They rose to the top because we’d locked up the people running import before them. After we took them down, someone else moved in. Crims always fill a vacuum: it’s a fundamental law.

Like their predecessors, this gang thought they were smarter than the people tracking them. Like their predecessors, we caught them thanks to our hard work and their arrogance. Back then, internet cafes were everywhere. They’d use a different cafe, and a different computer, to arrange drops and shipments. Each time, they shared a password for a single email account, saving the message as a draft rather than sending it. Smart. The messages were going nowhere, so they couldn’t be intercepted. We couldn’t get a warrant to install key-logging software, or screen-facing cameras, because we didn’t know which machine in which cafe they’d use next. But drugs are bought with cash, and you can’t email a pill.

The street-dealers were easy to find. Surveillance took us to their supplier. Following her, we found the re-up distributor and his far-too-flash car. A hard brake at some lights when I was trailing the bloke from in front had him ram the rear of my