No turning back, p.23
No Turning Back, page 23
An hour later, he’d showered, changed, and visited the galley. He returned to his and Olivia’s cabin with a tray in hand. “Room service,” he said, pushing the door closed.
“Champagne and caviar?” Olivia asked, her head emerging from their almost-person-sized shower cubicle.
“Close,” Pete said. “It’s a chicken tortilla which has a fancy name in Spanish, and there are grape pancakes for dessert.”
“Wow, they found chicken on Staten Island?” Olivia asked.
“I think it’s from a can,” Pete said. “There’s a new sign in the cafeteria telling you not to ask questions, so I didn’t.”
“Ooh, ominous,” Olivia said. “I suppose that means I shouldn’t ask where they found grapes, either. Are there any dry towels?”
He put the tray on the desk and checked their small closet. “No towels, no. Best I can offer you is a t-shirt. It’s clean.”
“That’ll have to do. Put towels on our shopping list for when we get to Savannah. Did you see many people in the mess?”
“Pretty much everyone who isn’t on the bridge,” Pete said. “Corrie’s telling them what happened. Zach was there, and Rufus.”
“How is Zach?”
“Well enough to complain,” Pete said. “I think he’ll be fine. Rufus was a bit grumpy, but I think that’s due to an abundance of attention from the kids. I guess he’s used to his alone-time. Did you check the bodycam footage?”
“I did,” Olivia said, as she began a hunt for clean clothes. “Boots!” she added as Pete dropped onto the bed. “You best get into the habit, because when we get to Oz, we’re having a shoes-off-at-the-door policy.”
“Tell that to the spiders,” Pete said, pulling them off.
“If I see a spider wearing boots, I will,” she said.
“Was Herrera among the dead?” Pete asked, as he stretched out.
“No. I didn’t recognise any of them,” she said. “Maybe he died back on the pier. Or maybe there was a mutiny and he was thrown over the side. I don’t think it matters, because even if Pruitt did know who he was, and if he survived, she can’t let him live. Besides, the cartel is clearly defunct, and he was basically on the run. Ah, but I’d feel happier if I had proof he was dead. What did they say Staten Island was like? Any sign of survivors?”
“Nope,” Pete said. “A load of bags had been left on the pier, and that’s where they found the food. It sounds like what we saw at Coney Island, or a bit like that pier near the U.N. on Manhattan. I guess there wasn’t room for the bags when the ship took the survivors away. At least, that’s the story I’m going to tell myself.”
“Was it a lot of food?” Olivia asked.
“They’re still doing a stock-check,” Pete said. “Ramon thinks it’ll amount to a couple of days, but most of it had spoiled, which is why I don’t think that chicken really is chicken.”
“Don’t say that until after I’ve eaten it,” she said. “We’re still going to Savannah?”
“Yep. Then the Pacific. And then… who knows?”
“Hopefully somewhere with a bigger bathroom,” Olivia said, lifting the warming-dish from the plate. “Was this for us to share, or is this all for me? Pete?”
She looked over, and saw that he was asleep.
17th April
Chapter 28 - The Leader’s Choice
The Atlantic
Pete was halfway to the mess for breakfast when Pita dashed along the corridor.
“The commissioner needs you!” she said, tugging at his arm.
“Both of us?” Olivia asked.
“No, just Pete.”
“Sounds like you’re in trouble,” Olivia said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” he said.
Aboard a rigidly stratified military ship, the room would have been the officers’ mess. Instead, it was a seminar room used for video-conferenced lectures during the ship’s diplomatically educational voyage north. Tess had used the room to interview the survivors. First, the three Guinns, then the Mexicans, and then the Georgians. Those first-hand accounts would be broadcast in the Pacific as a sad missive to the public, and to the exiled politicians, that the old order had been washed away.
Like in most of the ship, the room’s walls were panelled in green-shade vinyl, but here they were covered in vibrant prints of near-extinct animals of the Andes. The long, wood-effect table in the centre of the room had been riddled with bullets during the massacre of the original crew. The table, and the quarter of the flooring which it had proven impossible to scrub clean, had been thrown over the side. There were no tables now, just two rows of chairs, one facing the other.
“G’day, mate, have a seat,” Tess said, indicating the row opposite herself and Colonel Hawker.
“Am I in trouble?” Pete asked.
“Not a bit of it,” Tess said. “We’re discussing what to do about Long Island, and wanted your input.”
“I thought we were going to Savannah, then the Pacific,” Pete said.
“We are,” Hawker said. “When we get home, Canberra will want a report, and recommendations on what we found in New York.”
“We were given a broad remit for this mission,” Tess said. “I’d say we’ve done more than we were asked, but we need to decide what to do about Long Island.”
“I still don’t follow,” Pete said. “I guess, if we went back, we could pick up a few of the kids to bring back with us, but I’m not sure we have space for them all.”
“Kempton’s assessment is that Pruitt will do what she can to keep the people there alive,” Hawker said. “Do you concur?”
“I guess so,” Pete said. “Pruitt didn’t seem evil, not like the cartel. I’m still going back and forth on whether she recognised Lisa or not, whether she knew whether the Archangel’s crew were cartel. But whoever she was, and whatever crimes she once committed, I think she’s trying to repent. She’s kept the Long Islanders alive so far. Plus, now the Archangel is sunk, she has no easy way to escape. Either she leads those people, or lets someone else do it, and I can’t see her handing over power.”
“That’s not a ringing endorsement,” Tess said.
“Sorry, but I met her for less than five minutes,” Pete said. “Most of that time, I was waiting for gunfire.”
“But during that time, Kempton told Pruitt there were supplies in Raven Rock, and that the facility was empty except for the undead, yes?” Hawker asked.
“Yep, and Lisa showed Pruitt a video of Raven Rock so she could see it was abandoned.”
“Do you think Pruitt might go to Raven Rock?” Tess asked.
“We told her not to,” Pete said. “I think we did. Although, actually, no, I guess we didn’t. We just told her that wasn’t where the cartel sailors had come from, but that there were supplies and zombies there. Even so, it’s a long way by sea and road.”
“When we return to Canberra, we’ll give them our recommendations,” Tess said. “We could ask them to send a rescue fleet here. Say two cruise ships, plus a couple of warships, and a fuel tanker. Assuming they agree with our recommendations, and the ships are available when we roll into harbour, it’ll be a month before we get home, and another month before that rescue fleet sails into New York. Will Pruitt and her people still be there?”
“I see what you mean,” Pete said. “I can’t really speak for Pruitt, or any of her people, but if it were me, and after that gun battle at the pier, I’d want to leave. The rats ate their first effort at farming, and all they’re growing now is dirt. They’ve got walls, but they’re running out of bullets. We stole, and then blew up, a tanker filled with gasoline, and that must have been a large portion of their reserve. They were using gasoline generators for electricity. Maybe they can set up some solar or wind power, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Without electricity, cooking food and boiling water will become increasingly difficult.”
“They’re running a barter economy, is that right?” Tess asked.
“Yep. You can trade loot for hot showers, hot food, and power to charge up phones and the like. Medicine, too. I’m sure they were selling other things we didn’t see. Without electricity, they’ll have nothing to sell, so there’ll be no reason for the scavengers to bring their loot to the market. Someone was already stockpiling diesel. They haven’t handed it in yet, and I bet they won’t now. I guess whoever that is could use the fuel to bargain for a position of authority, except why would anyone want to when they can use the fuel to flee?”
“Exactly my point,” Hawker said, nodding to Tess. “Where else can they go, but Raven Rock?”
“Pete?” Tess asked.
“Hmm. I think they know that Canada was hit with bombs, so going north is out. South, along the coast, is just as urbanised, and you’d want to get into the countryside as quickly as you could. They know there are supplies at Raven Rock. Pruitt knows the cartel aren’t there. She also knows they don’t have many boats on Long Island. I think they have a ferry, but it can’t be big enough for all of them at the same time. If the mood is that they should leave, then she’ll need to lean into it, organise an exodus before the last ships are stolen and she’s trapped there. She’d ferry the people to the mainland, then drive the rest of the way. Everyone together, so that no one can jump ahead and lock them out of the bunker. And once she realises that’s a possibility, she’ll have to act quick or not at all.”
“And if you were living there, would you take that risk, Pete?” Tess asked.
Pete drummed his hand on the chair’s arm. “Whether Pruitt was lying to us or not, she’s in trouble. Dewhurst is probably dead, and certainly incapacitated, but he was leading one of the largest factions. Pruitt’s been shown to be weak. Except, I don’t think she can simply quit. Whatever she tells people about Herrera, she’ll need to give them a plan. Detective Demarkos knows about Raven Rock, too. But if Pruitt’s killed her to hide her link with the cartel, and if Pruitt dies in a coup, everyone else will still believe Raven Rock is full of survivors. Huh. Okay, sure, now I think about it, and if they think about it, Raven Rock is the only option other than staying put.”
“Let’s say there are five thousand on Long Island,” Tess said. “It’s more than we found in Cape Town, but less than were in the African Union convoy that departed from Inhambane. It’s a lot less than were being evacuated from the Andaman Islands, and there are a thousand populated islands a lot closer to Australia than that. There is a very good chance that the resources can’t be spared to help these people.”
“Each life is finally worth the same,” Hawker said. “We’ll save more if we start looking closer to home. The decision won’t be made by us,” he added. “But parliament will listen to our recommendations. Do we recommend anyone will be here in two months’ time?”
“We could go back to Long Island and tell them about the Pacific,” Pete said. “But it wouldn’t be fair to give them false hope if we couldn’t also promise help was on its way. What about a plane? Didn’t you guys run an airlift from Mozambique?”
“We had an African Union army protecting the runway,” Tess said. “We could fly a jet from Auckland. Maybe a 777, and certainly there are a few small jets with the range. It’d be a one-way trip. To guarantee the runway remained secure, we’d have to leave a team behind.”
“We don’t have the ammo,” Hawker said. “It sounds like the Long Islanders don’t, either.”
“And we don’t know if the runway at JFK is in a usable condition,” Tess said. “More importantly, we don’t know if that plane will ever be sent. If it is, it’s still one plane which, almost certainly, can’t refuel. We can send supplies, and soldiers, but only if a fleet is on the way. If the ships aren’t available, we risk stranding our people on Long Island, and we’d have wasted a month or two of those survivors’ time and supplies which could be used to get them to Raven Rock.”
“We could go back and tell them to leave,” Pete said.
“They might try to take the ship,” Tess said.
“After their experience with the Archangel, they might try to sink us,” Hawker said. “Anyone who stays is being left behind.”
“Oh. Well, it’s not like I want to, but yeah, okay, I’ll do that,” Pete said.
Tess laughed. “Kind of you to offer, but we’re not asking for volunteers.”
“Nicko and I would stay behind if we thought it would help,” Bruce said. “But for it to help, we’ve got to go in with a plan, and be certain it represents their best chance at survival. That brings us back to whether or not they should leave.”
“I really couldn’t say,” Pete said.
“No worries, because Lisa Kempton had a suggestion for us,” Tess said. “She says she owns a converted cruise ship that she dispatched to Europe to pick up some of her people. Honestly, the more I hear about what she did, the more I want to lock her up. I’d say the charges are treason, except she was proved to be correct. It’s going to be a real mess when we get her back to Oz.”
“And it’ll be someone else’s mess,” Hawker said. “She says her ship went to Europe to pick up her people. She doesn’t know when, or if, it might re-cross the Atlantic because her plans, like the cartel’s, didn’t include zoms. She has a mansion on the Delmarva Peninsula. She thinks some of her people might go there, and that maybe this ship will dock nearby. The captain’s her wife.”
“Tamika,” Pete said. “I met her. She was driving the limo which took me to the airport in South Bend.”
“Tamika has a sister, Loretta, who was in the FBI,” Tess said. “This FBI agent was last seen heading to D.C. Not on orders from Kempton, but out of duty to her oath, to her country, and to her conscience. That mansion is somewhere this FBI agent might go, bringing other survivors with her. Maybe the ship’s already gone, or maybe it never arrived. But it could be her people went there. Lisa wants us to look. If they’re there, she’ll lead them to New York to help the Long Islanders.”
“Help them to stay, or to go?” Pete asked.
“That would depend on whether the ship’s there or not,” Tess said. “But maybe the peninsula is a more defensible location than Long Island. Maybe these people of hers know of another redoubt.”
“What do you think?” Hawker asked.
“I know she stashed guns and gear across the world,” Pete said. “But it was small amounts to help her escape the authorities.”
“And what do you think of us taking a detour to the Delmarva Peninsula?” Tess asked.
“I guess it’s worth a try,” Pete said. “That’s all it is though, right? The chances of us finding anyone are slim.”
“They are,” Hawker said. “My opinion is that we’ll find no one, because if there was anyone there, and if they had the ability to travel, they would have gone to New York. However, Naval Station Norfolk is on the Virginia mainland, south of the peninsula. The odds of finding any survivors, or ships, there is no greater than of finding them on the peninsula, but there could be some supplies left behind, and a naval base would make for a more defensible redoubt than Long Island. It is possible we could send a team to New York, and tell them to move there.”
“The stay-behind team would be Bruce, Nicko, Sergeant Temple, and Mayor Jak,” Tess said. “I want you to keep an eye on Kempton for me. On the ship, and on the shore. If she wants to vanish, let her. But I don’t want anyone else vanishing with her.”
“You don’t trust her?” Pete asked.
“Considering what she did to you and Corrie, I’m surprised you do,” Tess said.
“Me, too, sometimes,” Pete said. “When do we arrive at the peninsula?”
“Tomorrow,” Tess said. “We’ll make our approach at dawn.”
18th April
Chapter 29 - Rising Danger
The Delmarva Peninsula
The Delmarva Peninsula was a massive almost-island, nearly two hundred miles long, and seventy miles wide, sheltering some of America’s most famous cities from the worst of the Atlantic storms. North of the peninsula lay Philadelphia. To the west, across the Chesapeake Bay, were Baltimore and Washington. South of the bay was the city of Norfolk, and the U.S. naval station that was to be their first port of call. But as Pete looked west through the binoculars, he saw an obvious and immediate problem: the Hampton Roads Bridge clearly wasn’t tall enough for a sailing yacht, let alone the icebreaker.
An alarm sounded. “Radiation warning,” came the crackly voice of Captain Renton. “All crew inside.”
Pete took one last look at the bridge, catching a lurching movement between a pair of abandoned cars, before heading inside, and to his secondary station.
They’d run drills yesterday for what to do in the event of a fast-boat pirate attack. Everyone who knew how to fire a gun had been given a station on deck, but now they were gathered in the corridors, looking as anxious as when they’d been rescued from Savannah.
The Georgians had brought few firearms with them. The New Zealanders had brought enough MARS-L assault rifles and Benelli M3 shotguns for the original crew, while the Australians had a crate of well-travelled M4-carbines rescued from a runway in Perth. A few souvenirs from Corn Island rounded out the armoury, leaving half of the Georgians armed only with Clyde’s boarding axes.
Pete’s station was in the science centre, where the cameras, and multiple doors, would provide quicker access to any part of the deck. When he arrived, he found it empty except for Corrie.
“Where’s Doc Flo and Leo?” Pete asked.
“On the bridge with Tess, the colonel, and the captain,” Corrie said.
“And Mrs Guinn?”
“Walking Rufus around the hold,” Corrie said. “He was getting antsy stuck in here.”
“How bad is the radiation?” Pete asked, taking a seat next to his sister. She’d redesigned the layout of the screens again. Four monitors each displayed a different compass-point-view from the mast cameras. Next to each screen was a shaded silhouette of a ship, indicating whether it showed port, starboard, aft, or forward.
