No turning back, p.46
No Turning Back, page 46
“The hull’s as dry as Tibooburra on a Monday morning,” Corrie said. “The engines work. I’m ready to take her out into deeper waters. Plus, one of the newcomers, Hannah Stone, used to work a tourist-tour boat on the Mississippi. She worked maintenance above the waterline, but she knew her way around the engine room. She says this ship isn’t too dissimilar. We’re ready to go.”
“Except Lisa wants to leave,” Aqsa added.
“What, why?” Pete asked.
“Our shortages are universal,” Lisa said. “Most pressing are medicine and food. Either we spend the next two hours searching this harbour town, possibly with no result, or we spend one hour driving back to Sidnaw. We know we can find food, and some very limited medical supplies, in Sidnaw. Limited is better than none.”
“We can’t go back,” Aqsa said.
“Why not?” Lisa said.
“Um, the cartel?” Aqsa said.
“I’m with her,” Corrie said.
“The newcomers have not eaten properly in a month,” Lisa said. “We will have no food left by midnight. It is all well and good saying we can catch fish in the lake, but without line or net, and at night, I don’t hold high hopes for salmon at breakfast. I will take one truck, fill it with food, and return before dark, but only if I leave now.”
“Not travelling down the roads we just took,” Aqsa said. “I was at the back, and I had nothing but zombies in the rear mirror.”
Olivia fired. “Inbound. Three more coming!”
“You won’t be able to load up the truck on your own,” Corrie said. “I’ll go with you.”
“No you won’t,” Pete said. “We need you to prepare the ship. I’ll go with Lisa.”
“We’ll go,” Olivia said.
Pete didn’t give Corrie time to express her unhappiness at being left behind, though it was written across her face as the three of them jumped into one of the army trucks. The shell and ammunition crates rattled across the back as Lisa drove them south.
“Are you trying to hit them?” Pete said, as Lisa winged one, then a second zombie.
“I’m just anxious to get back to the ship,” Lisa said. “There was a time I liked driving, but that ended long before the outbreak.”
“We’ve got time, though,” Olivia said. “About two days, right? Margalotta’s going to wonder where Abernathy is tonight, but won’t start looking until tomorrow.”
“A point in favour of not letting this task wait,” Lisa said, slowing before swerving to avoid one of the undead. “I should confess that I do have an ulterior motive.”
“When do you not?” Olivia said. “As long as you understand we’re getting the food, and then returning to the ship.”
“Absolutely,” Lisa said. “During the drive from Florence, I had Ms Stone for a companion in the cab. She told me a most interesting story about why Margalotta is suddenly so desperate to leave Michigan.”
“Why?” Pete asked.
“Did Captain Stahl not mention it?” Lisa asked. “Do you recall, as we overflew Indiana, we saw a great mass of the undead?”
“A horde,” Olivia said. “Millions of them, big enough to wipe a town from the map.”
“There is more than one,” Lisa said. “A second formed from among the refugees who flocked to Sault Ste Marie, and found the crossing destroyed. A third emerged from the ruins of Chicago. Margalotta is thus trapped between an anvil and a furnace. She has no choice but to flee.”
“How does that tie into this trip back to Sidnaw?” Olivia asked.
“We shall collect the food and bring it back before nightfall,” Lisa said. “But I would like to destroy the plane first. Abernathy came looking for a plane, after all. The highway on which the compound is built would be one of the potential routes for Margalotta to take if she were driving east.”
“There’s no way that plane could possibly take off,” Pete said. “Not after that storm.”
“I didn’t inspect it,” Lisa said. “But since she seeks a plane, she must have a pilot, and probably a mechanic. It would be unfortunate if, with her demise so near, we were to leave a means of escape in her path.”
“Where could she go?” Olivia asked. “All her redoubts were destroyed.”
“Except one,” Lisa said. “The airfield at Sutton. I don’t know if the wall around that runway will hold, and we don’t know if the people in the bunker will welcome her, or hide as they did from us. However, there was a storage tank of aviation fuel behind the hangar. And, of course, she would have gone through Sutton before coming to Michigan. Presumably by air, and flown by the same pilot she is now hoping will take her to safety.”
“Which is why she’s looking for a plane,” Pete said. He slapped his hand against the dash. “We should have let the zoms onto the runway in Sutton.”
“No, we did the right thing,” Olivia said. “The just thing. No one should sit in judgement on strangers. Except for the Herrera family. Them, I’m very happy to judge.”
After the first five miles, the number of undead on the road began to thin. By the time they reached the highway, and the plane, it had been five minutes since they’d seen one.
“There’s no way that plane is going to fly anywhere,” Pete said.
The wind had tugged the aircraft from the road. The port wing was bent, while the cockpit window was cracked.
“For my own peace of mind, I’d like to make certain,” Lisa said. “One minute, please.” She opened the cab door, and stepped out.
“You know we haven’t seen a zombie in ages?” Olivia said.
“It’s all the driving we’ve been doing,” Pete said.
“You mean in a circle back and forth to Baraga?” Olivia said. “If the zombies are not on these roads, they were certainly on the back roads north of here. If we do make it back to the ship, this absolutely will be the last time we drive through these parts.”
“We’ll make it back,” Pete said. “Here’s Lisa.”
“That was far easier, and far less satisfying, than I anticipated,” Lisa said, climbing back behind the driver’s seat.
When Pete looked in the mirror, he saw a thin wisp of smoke drifting from the cockpit’s cracked windows. “Did you set a fire?” he asked.
“After cutting a few wires,” Lisa said.
As they continued on to the facility, Pete kept one eye on the cracked mirror, watching the growing plume of oily smoke rising from the plane, so didn’t see the zombie until it lurched from behind the partially crushed bus. Lisa braked. The zombie tripped, falling face first onto the road, right in front of the slowing tyre. The skull popped, but the sound was lost in the far louder explosion behind them.
The truck rocked as the blast wave overtook them, while shrapnel pattered along the roadway behind.
“Ah, apologies,” Lisa said. “I forgot the plane’s fuel tank was far from empty.”
Pete looked at the smoke cloud rising behind, and the many smaller plumes rising from the scattered and burning debris. “You’d need more than a mechanic to get that in the air,” he said.
The truck bounced across the slowly rotting undead shot by Corrie when they’d first arrived, then through a new swamp created by the recent storms. Though it was shallow in depth, five metres of road already lay beneath an opal-black mire.
“It’s the bodies,” Olivia whispered as the tyres splashed through the noxious ford. “All those bodies dumped in that field created a dam for all that rainwater. If we hadn’t already left, I can’t imagine we’d want to stay. There’s the turning. Looks clear. No zoms. That’s good.”
“I’ve got the gate,” Pete said, jumping out as Lisa stopped. He pulled the outer gate open, then the inner. The middle hadn’t been closed. As the truck pulled inside, he left the outer gate open, closing only the inner gate before taking a moment to scan the road outside. There were a lot more corpses than he’d remembered.
He walked over to the cab.
“I think it best if we find a ramp down which we can empty the last of those shells,” Lisa said.
“And I think you should leave this to the professionals,” Olivia said. “What do you think, Pete, the loading dock at the back of the office?”
“Should be about the right height,” Pete said. “You park there, I’ll go grab the handcarts. We left them in the garage, right?”
“Get two,” Olivia said. “And I think there was a stack of empty plastic crates in there. Grab those for anything the kids didn’t pack.”
Pete slapped the cab, and made his way across the cracked asphalt, around Abernathy’s abandoned sheriff’s car, and towards the garage.
It hadn’t been a bad refuge, in that it had kept them alive. But looking around now, it had been a close-run thing. They’d been lucky finding the ship in Baraga, the fuel at the airport, and arriving in Florence in time to help the prisoners escape. Yes, they’d been lucky, but luck always turned.
He opened the pedestrian door at the side of the garage. The cavernous room was dark, but not as empty as he’d expected. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw the up-armoured SUV. Then he saw the barrel of a gun. Slowly, his eyes focused on the hand with the chemical burn on the thumb, the black-sleeved arm, and the malevolent face with a crowing smile.
“Trap! It’s a—” he managed to yell before something heavy slammed into the small of his back. He fell forward. Something cold pressed into his neck.
“Move, and I’ll shoot,” a woman said. Not Margalotta Herrera, but one of her guards.
He felt hands at his sides, plucking the gun from his holster, the knife from his belt. Hands roughly checked beneath his coat, before the gun’s barrel was drawn back from his neck.
“On your feet,” Herrera said.
“Got ’em,” came a shout from outside, and that voice didn’t belong to Olivia or Lisa.
With a gun in his back, and with Herrera behind that, he was marched outside, to the open parking lot in front of the office. There, Lisa and Olivia knelt, hands on their heads, with two men holding handguns behind. Another woman stood to one side, holding a shotgun.
“My dear Lisa, how glad I am to find you here,” Margalotta said. “It has been so long, hasn’t it, old friend. Nikita, how many?”
“Only three got out of the truck, ma’am,” the woman with the shotgun said. “There were none inside.”
It was his shotgun, Pete realised, incensed. He recognised the red clips on the strap. Okay, so he’d taken it from Abernathy’s police car, but even so. His internal rage slowly shifted to understanding. The Elkhart sheriff’s car was parked in full view of the gates. Abernathy had been sent here. Of course, there was one way to clear things up.
“Did you go to Florence yet?” he asked.
Margalotta waved a hand. The woman behind him kicked at his ankles, sweeping him from his feet, then kicked again, at his spine. Pete managed to roll with the blow, though it still hurt, but made a play of the pain, staying curled on the ground while he tried to formulate a plan.
In the distance, he heard an engine. Margalotta had reinforcements inbound, so if he were to act, it would have to be soon.
Margalotta turned back to Lisa. “I did so hope we would meet again.”
“I’m certain you’ve prepared a tedious speech,” Lisa said. “I have no time for it.”
“You are correct,” Margalotta said. “There is no time. I had such plans, Lisa. I wanted weeks. I hoped for months. I had an operative who believed he could keep you alive for years.”
“He’s dead,” Lisa said. “All your people are dead. Your nephew is dead. Your brother is dead. Your mine in Colombia is a crater. Oh, and do you recall Mr Clemens? Of course you do. He returned to England to dismantle your organisation in Europe. This is what your schemes have been reduced to, Margalotta, a concrete prison surrounded by a putrescent swamp. Fitting, don’t you think?”
“Not quite all,” Herrera said. “You think you’re so clever, you think you know our plans. You don’t. You never did.”
“If they include the bunker in Sutton, then yes,” Lisa said. “Or your brother’s ship, the Archangel? That was sunk. Trowbridge is dead. But do you know the most amusing part of this calamity?”
Pete coughed as an alternative to swearing. His plan had been to claim there was a map to Trowbridge’s location in an office upstairs as a bid to split the group up, and so even the odds. But that wouldn’t work now.
Margalotta drew a long, thin knife and stabbed it into Lisa’s shoulder.
“No, Lisa. Make me laugh. What is the most amusing part?” Margalotta said, as she slowly pulled the blade out.
“Love you, Olivia,” Pete said, and rolled backwards and sideways. A gun cracked, but he kept moving, curling and turning, tackling the woman who’d been stationed behind him. He knew his attempt had failed because she was already bringing her gun to bear. Better to die trying, so he tried to topple her over, until her head exploded in a shower of blood and bone. As she collapsed, he scrabbled for her gun. Another shot sounded, then a burst, before he had the pistol in his hand and had spun around. Olivia and Lisa had both tackled Margalotta. Three gangsters were down. The last, the woman with the shotgun, had taken cover behind the police car, clearly better aware of the sniper’s location. Pete’s finger curled around the trigger. He didn’t let go until the gun clicked empty.
“Clear,” he said.
“Reload, re-arm,” Lisa said as Olivia rolled the old gangster onto her back. Lisa, clutching her arm, grabbed one of the fallen handguns and aimed it at Margalotta.
Pete retrieved his shotgun, and aimed it at the gate, but lowered it when he saw who was running towards them: Corrie. He ran to meet her. “Where’d you come from?” he called as she opened the gate.
“The ship,” Corrie said. “You should have stayed a little longer to hear what the prisoners said.”
“One moment,” Lisa said, picking up a gun. Margalotta was slowly getting to her feet.
“You won this hand, I see,” Herrera said. “And what now, Ms Kempton? Do you really think an Australian prison cell will hold me?”
Lisa fired. Once was enough.
“Is that all of them?” Corrie asked.
“I think so,” Pete said. “How did she know about Australia?”
“Yollie,” Corrie said. “That’s why I followed. You know how Abernathy said Yollie and her friends were the reason he knew to come to Sidnaw? You should have asked Captain Stahl exactly what Yollie told them, and why that didn’t lead to a mutiny.”
“Perhaps you could tell us,” Lisa said, leaning against the sheriff’s car.
“Let me see your arm,” Olivia said. “Okay, no, this is bad. Very bad. I’m going to find some bandages.”
“And while we wait, perhaps you could enlighten us as to what brought about this fortuitously timed rescue,” Lisa said.
“It’s not fun having secrets kept from you, is it?” Corrie said. “Remember the night we arrived, the kids weren’t much interested in any part of our story except the second-hand tales of Dan Blaze. Because I was recounting what Zach told me, and because I was telling the tale to kids, I skipped a lot of the stuff about the cartel being involved in the coup during that first telling. I said there’d been a change of government. That’s about all Yollie and her people knew. So when she told Margalotta, that was all Yollie had to say. They were tortured, all four of them, to make sure that the story was accurate. And it was, as far as they knew. But Margalotta took that to mean her coup in Canberra had worked.”
“She wanted to get to Australia because she thought the government was loyal to her?” Pete asked.
“It gets better, or worse, depending on your point of view,” Corrie said. “They’ve been camped near Florence for the last few days. They knew we were here, but they were hoping the hordes would travel north to south, or perhaps wipe each other out as they bumped into each other. Then, they were going to make contact, find out how we were going to get back to Oz, and ingratiate their way onto our plane.”
“So why did they want the tank shells?”
“In case we had to drive some of the way,” Corrie said. “That was their plan-B. Plan-A was that they could kill us and fly south, but that depended on Abernathy finding a plane.”
“We’d already won?” Lisa asked.
“Depends on what you think victory looks like,” Corrie said. “If she’d lived long enough to reach Oz, it would only be to hang, but she’d have caused a lot more misery en route.”
“How’d you get here, sis?” Pete asked.
“The Humvee,” Corrie said. “I always fancied driving one.”
“There’s three zoms at the gate,” Pete said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to collect that car.”
“Start by packing the food,” Lisa whispered. “The ship needs the supplies.”
It might have been the labour, but by the time they’d loaded the truck, and Margalotta’s SUV, Pete was sweating a river.
“I think that’s it,” he said, walking around to the cab where Lisa was resting.
“She’s asleep,” Corrie said, before leaning forward to check. “Yes. Just sleeping. Blood loss, I guess.”
“Then better we get her to the ship,” Pete said.
“Want me to take care of it?” Corrie asked.
“I need the practice,” Pete said. He drew the pistol from his recovered holster, and walked over to the fence. Stopping two metres away, he raised the gun, and fired.
Ten zombies. Fifteen bullets. He was improving, but he’d still keep his eyes out for a pike. As he’d begun shooting, Olivia and Corrie had switched on their engines. As the SUV contained fewer supplies, and didn’t contain Lisa, it would take the lead and so act as a battering ram. As the last zombie fell, and before any more could lurch around the perimeter, Pete threw the gate open, and jumped into the SUV’s passenger seat. This time, since the cartel knew where this redoubt was, they wouldn’t close the gates behind them.
Olivia drove over the just-fallen undead. Pete checked the mirror to see that Corrie was following, and again when they reached the highway.
