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

“Yeah, well, I’m still terrified of them,” he said. “The tunnels would have been expensive, right? The tunnels and all the stuff stashed in them?”

“Very. They required running an entire mining town as cover. Probably blackmailed their way into getting it for free, but the workers would need wages and supplies.”

“So there won’t be another underground base somewhere?” Zach asked. “Because there’s lots of mines in Australia.”

“I’d say no, not in Australia,” Tess said. “I’m still piecing together what they considered a best-case scenario. Essentially, they got in so deep their only way out was to destroy civilisation. I’m not so blind as to say it’s impossible for them to have bought a lair in Australia, but buying a mine anywhere would attract attention, either from locals, from the regulators, or from protestors. And, of course, from the politicians they were in league with. No, I think there was only one mine.”

“But probably more supplies somewhere else,” Zach said.

“Probably,” Tess said. “But the guns were for an army. The miners are dead. No way will they find another.”

“There you are, Zach,” Clyde said, clambering out the water-lock door. “I was looking for you.”

“You were?” Zach said.

Clyde held out a bottle of the fizzy orange soda. “Thanks for saving my life, mate.”

“Me? You were the one who jumped on the grenade.”

“I was bloody lucky it was a dud. Wouldn’t have stopped her from flinging another our way. Good on ya. I’d give you a medal, but this is better.”

“No worries,” Zach said, taking the bottle. “You want to share?”

Clyde pulled another two bottles from his bag. “I snaffled a couple more when the purser wasn’t looking. We better destroy the evidence.”

“You worked with explosives in the army, didn’t you?” Zach asked.

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to talk about it,” Clyde said. “I do know I don’t want to. Afterward, I wanted to help rebuild. But there’s not much point beating a bloke’s sword into a plough if a forgotten bomblet will take out his tractor. So I got a job clearing up the land.”

“You can’t talk about it?” Zach asked. “So it’s like a national secret or something?”

“It’s classified,” Clyde said.

“Still?” Zach asked.

“I guess so,” Clyde said. “So talking about it would be a breach of the law we’re out here trying to uphold. Never could abide hypocrisy. Came across far too much of it during my service. At home. Abroad. I’m not saying I’m not occasionally guilty of it myself, but we must strive to be better.”

“That’s like the complete opposite of Toppley,” Zach said.

“Not the complete opposite,” Clyde said. “I was talking with her. We’ve a few friends in common. At the edge, where life and death walk hand in hand, right and wrong are hard to tell apart, but you can always tell good from evil.”

“That’s a—” Tess began, and was cut short by the alarm.

“They’re about to fire,” Clyde said.

“We should get inside?” Zach asked.

“Nah, we’ll be okay out here. You just wouldn’t want to be on shore,” Clyde said.

The shot was loud, but not nearly as loud as the explosion as the harbour-side fuel tanks detonated in a haze of orange flame.

“Now that’s what I’m—” Zach began.

The ground erupted. The shore vanished, replaced by a burning cloud of sand and oil. Dust and flame mushroomed upwards, while a wall of noise and heat shot outward. The ship rocked. Tess dropped to a knee. She could hear yelling, but couldn’t place from whom.

Clyde pushed Zach inside the water-lock. Tess staggered in after them. With the door closed, she realised the screaming was the ship’s alarm. By the time she reached the bridge, the ship was underway, slowly lumbering northwest, picking up speed, the cameras aimed at the shore.

“What just happened?” Tess asked.

“There must have been a fuel store below ground,” Adams said. “A very large one. I’m sure the scientists can calculate the size, but the answer will be in the millions of litres.”

“That’s why they didn’t bother with a coal power station,” Tess said. “They had all the diesel they needed until they could pump some more of their own.”

“The main blast triggered a string of tertiary explosions further inland,” Adams said. “These were smaller than that initial blast, but there were at least four, and in an almost straight line. I think that was the tunnel, and it makes me wonder what else was stored down there.”

“Captain, the fire has spread to the coal bunker,” Lieutenant Renton said.

“That settles the fate of this place,” Adams said. “The coal will burn for weeks. Nothing usable remains there. The mission has been a success. We’ve destroyed the sisters’ supplies, and what had to be their principal fuel depot in this ocean. Take us north, Lieutenant, and plot us a course for the Panama Canal.”

5th April

 

Chapter 39 - Two Out of Thirty Minutes

The Caribbean Sea

Tess pressed the spacebar to pause the video playing on the laptop. To conserve energy, and so fuel, the internal temperature was being kept only a few degrees below outside. And outside, it was a furnace as a weather front followed them west. But inside the cabin shared by the two scientists, with its doors closed for privacy, it was a stuffy oven.

“This video was shot in New York, two days after the outbreak?” Tess asked.

“You just watched a zombie die,” Leo said. “My theory is that the pre-infection health of the host correlates with the re-animate’s life expectancy.”

“A theory which is almost completely wrong,” Avalon said.

“In what respect is it correct?” Tess asked.

“That from the moment a host is reanimated, the zombie is dying,” Avalon said. “Within six to twelve months, it will become numerically obvious.”

“Does that mean we’ll start to see it?”

“Notice it,” Avalon