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

“D’you know why we call in a psychiatrist when dealing with a serial killer? You need a specialist to get inside the mind of someone like that. You wouldn’t commit genocide. I wouldn’t commit genocide. Trying to understand someone who willingly would doesn’t come naturally. When did Avalon tell the captain we should go to Panama?”

“Back in Mozambique. Just after we arrived and you sent me and them onto the ship.”

“Back then?” I said. “Ah, there’s nothing to see out here.” So I went inside to find Dr Avalon.

I found her, and Leo, in their cabin, reviewing images of Natal.

“It’s an interesting crater,” Leo said. “From its size, we can determine the size of the blast, and from that, the warhead, and so get a guess at who fired the missile.”

“How would knowing that help us?” I asked, closing the door, and leaning against it.

“All information is useful, Commissioner,” Avalon said. “Though not always immediately.”

“Right. Sure. That’s a good answer,” I said. “Why are you here?”

“It’s quieter than the bridge,” Leo said.

“Sorry, my fault. Bad question,” I said. “Why are you on this ship? Why did we come west?”

“To find the lab where the virus was made,” Leo said.

“You’ve done this before, right? You’ve inspected labs where people have been playing around with deadly viruses. Like with Ebola in the DRC?”

“That was a waste of a trip,” Avalon said.

“Interesting choice of words,” I said. “You know the kind of troops required for seizing a remote compound. A hundred U.S. Rangers, say. Or the sailors and Marines from two U.S. frigates?”

“It’s impossible to tell you what we’ll need until we know who is there,” Avalon said.

“Precisely,” I said. “But back in Mozambique, after I packed you two aboard, you told the captain it was important we head to Panama. At that point, you knew that we wouldn’t have the military personnel to seize a narco-compound in Colombia.”

“We can still destroy it,” Leo said.

“I hope so,” I said. “But we don’t need you two aboard for that. You sold Anna on the idea of heading to Britain and Manhattan for the vaccine and for patient zero, but as part of your work to build a weapon. After we found Sir Malcolm Baker, we compromised on Colombia. Back in Canberra, I was too exhausted to think clearly, and too happy to trust you two and your expert opinions. I didn’t begin to understand the technical difficulties of this kind of trip until Captain Adams explained them to me. But you two would have known. It’s numbers, isn’t it? Distance and range. You would have known both the moment you stepped aboard this ship. Before we left Mozambique you knew we’d never reach the Northern Hemisphere. We’d never get to New York. You told the captain our goal should be Panama. Not Colombia because you also knew we didn’t have the people to take that facility. So answer me this. Yes or no. Are you working on a weapon?”

“Yes,” Leo said.

“No,” Avalon said.

“Leo, quiet,” I said, holding up a hand. “Dr Avalon, explain yourself. You aren’t working on a weapon?”

“I’ve finished,” she said.

“When did you finish?” I asked.

“That’s an impossible—” Leo began.

“Zip it,” I said. “Dr Avalon?”

“I had three candidates while we were still in Canada. In Canberra, I gathered most of the data I needed.”

“You were done before we departed,” I said. “Why aren’t you testing it in a lab in the outback?”

“Because that would be utterly insane,” Avalon said. “The old world is gone. The old civilisations are history. Do you really want the first great achievement of our new age to be the construction of a weapon of mass destruction?”

“If it would bring a swift end to the horror, yes,” I said.

“It won’t,” she said.

“That’s not your decision,” I said.

“Whose should it be?” she said.

“The—” I began, and stopped, because this woman doesn’t so much walk-the-earth-lightly as tunnel beneath the surface. “Okay, fine, explain to me why you lied to Oswald and parliament, the U.N., to Anna, me, and to everyone aboard this ship.”

“I didn’t lie,” Avalon said. “I can develop a biochemical agent which will destroy the undead. It will also destroy most other living things in its path. Mammals, birds, trees. Probably even the grass. Millions of the uninfected would have been killed as collateral damage. Entire states, entire nations, would become deserts. Including from infection, total loss of life would have stood at two billion. More would die from starvation. But the zombies would be gone. Rivers would still flow. New trees could be planted. Old fields could be ploughed.”

“Two billion?” I asked.

“I thought it would be closer to one billion,” Leo said. “Depending on what kind of relief effort could be mounted. But this was before the nuclear bombs.”

“The nuclear madness made infection-elimination impossible and unnecessary,” Avalon said. “Why bother expending resources to turn North America into a desert? There are fewer than fifty million people in secure redoubts in the Pacific, with an estimated further fifty million trapped in day-to-day survival elsewhere in that ocean. At best, three-quarters will be alive next year. It will take a century before the Americas are home to more than scavengers.”

“A lot of the land will be irradiated and toxic anyway,” Leo said. “Destroying more wouldn’t help anyone.”

“Okay,” I said, doing my best to keep my anger in check. “So why don’t you take your idea and develop it, refine it, make something a little less apocalyptic?”

“It’s pointless,” Avalon said.

“It’d take too long,” Leo said. “In six months, the zoms will die.”

“No,” Avalon said. “In six months, it will become evident that they have been dying all along. The human body is notoriously fragile. The infected can’t exist forever. Within six