Dead Tropics (14 page)

"Yeah, well." He blustered. "Tell your daughter that, will you? I've haven't had a moment of peace ever since!"

I grinned and looked around. Michele was standing next to Lucas, playing self-consciously with her hair, while the babies played underfoot.

"Where's Jessie?" I asked anxiously as I realised who was missing. Kaye touched my arm reassuringly. "She's sleeping. Come and see for yourself."

I followed her into my nieces' bedroom and saw the frail looking child curled up in the bed, looking peaceful and angelic.

"Is she okay?" I whispered. I suddenly realised that I didn't even know why she was in hospital in the first place.

Kaye nodded, understanding what I was asking. "Turns out she's an asthmatic. She had a bad attack last night. Needed to be observed overnight but she is fine now. Just a bit tired. I gave her a bath and some food and then suggested she have a nap."

Food. I suddenly realised I was starving! Kaye recognised the look on my face and laughed. "Come on, I'll make you guys some sandwiches and you can fill me in on everything. I'm still trying to process the stuff Roy and Michele told me!"

As my sister talked, I felt the tension start to drain from my body. My sister, my kids, my friends - we were here and, for now, we were safe. I knew it wouldn't last but for now, a few moments of peace felt like a slice of heaven.

****

After a long drink of cold water, we sat around the long wooden table and brought each other up to date. I told an edited version of our adventures, although I'm sure they filled in the more unpleasant gaps for themselves.

"What about here?" I asked. "Any activity, dead or alive?"

Kaye wrinkled her forehead. "No, it has been as quiet as ever. I haven't seen or heard anything unusual - unless you count the sight of an ambulance coming up my driveway."

As I opened my mouth to ask, Roy pointed downwards. "Parked it behind the four wheel drive. That's why you didn't see it. "

"What about the radio or the tv?" I asked. "Any information?"

Kaye snorted. "This morning, there was all that talk about the encephalitis outbreak and then the minister came on at lunch to say that they were considering implementing a quarantine. Nothing since!"

"Maybe we should check again." Emma suggested.

Kaye gracefully stood up and picked up the tv remote. She frowned as only static came on. She flicked to another channel and then another. There was static on all the channels. Kaye moved to the radio and tried to find a station. Static. She turned to us with a raised brow. "I'm going to take a stab and say that this is not a good sign."

I sighed. "We need to talk about what we should do next. Do we sit tight, make this place secure and wait for our armed forces to bail us out? Or do we get out of town?"

"What about Mike and Ken?" Emma asked anxiously.

"I hope that they are okay, Emma, but if they are not here soon, we are going to have to assume that they are not coming. In the meantime, we need to make plans."

Kaye looked across at me, subdued, and my gut clenched at the fear in her eyes. I knew what she was thinking because the thought was in my mind, too.
What about our brother and her husband? Were they safe? Can we leave town without them? Would they want us to?
I pushed the thoughts away. Joe would want me to keep our children safe, as would Andy. That had to be our first priority.

For the next half an hour, we discussed our options. Going north was out of the question as there was only rainforest and the ocean. And, as I pointed out, Cape Tribulation seemed to be the origin of this plague so heading in that direction was not a good idea.

Going south was not a good option as we would have to travel through parts of the infected city. That only left the hills. About twenty minutes up the road was the exit to the Tablelands, the mountainous farming region of far north Queensland. As far as we knew, that road was still clear, but for how long? We needed to make a decision soon.

Once we'd determined our viable options, we argued about the pros and cons of each for several minutes. I felt torn. All I wanted to do was huddle under a blanket and sleep, and in these peaceful surroundings, it was easy to believe that we were safe. I desperately wanted to believe that I could just relax and leave it to the government to fight the walking corpses.

However, the cynical side of me said I should pack up and head out of this hellhole while I had the chance, because the only thing I could count on was myself and my small group of family and friends. An image of Joe and Andy standing on the pier, laughing, flitted across my eyes.
No
, I thought fiercely as panic rose,
I have to trust that they are safe, I have to.

"We have to go." I said. "We don't know how long this situation could go on for. We don't know how long we can hold out here for. It makes more sense to take the kids up to our friend, Claudette's, farm until this mess has been cleared up."

I would find a way to get through to the boys, I promised myself. The boat usually arrived back around 6am and Joe's mobile phone came back into reception range about an hour or so before then. I could warn him and Andy off.

"What about Mike and Ken?" Emma repeated her earlier question. "Are we going to wait for them?"

I shook my head. "We shouldn't wait any longer. You saw how quickly things deteriorated in the city. We don't know how long the road will remain open. We'll leave them a note so they know where to find us."
If they make it here
, I added silently. Emma nodded slowly, chewing her lip unhappily.

Roy spoke up. "What if this
problem
has spread to the Tablelands?" The thought hadn't even occurred to me. Surely, it couldn't have spread that far in one day!

Pushing myself away from the table, I looked around the group. "Maybe it has. If we need to, at least we can take the inland route down to Townsville; hell, we can go all the way down to the bottom of Australia if we want! Here, we have no options except to stick it out."

There were nods of agreement around the table. With that decided, we split up to pack food, clothes and whatever weapons we could find. I found an axe and long handed shovel in the shed; Kaye produced some butcher knives and Roy located some star pickets.

Twenty minutes later, we pinned a note to the verandah post for Mike and Ken, piled uncomfortably into the four-wheel drive and headed for the Tablelands exit. In the backseat, Kaye's toddlers wriggled on Emma and Roy's laps, while Michele and Lucas juggled my two in the rear beside a sleepy-eyed Jessie. I rode shotgun as Kaye drove. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I grinned as I caught Michele and Lucas casting sidelong glances at each other. Even in these circumstances, teenage hormones don't rest, it would seem.

2

The streets were now eerily empty. No cars moved along the road, no children played in front of their homes, no schoolchildren played in the grounds. Everywhere, people huddled silently in their homes.

As we turned onto the highway, the situation changed dramatically. We watched, open-mouthed, as tanks, jeeps, and trucks full of grim faced soldiers passed us, heading for the city. They must have travelled through the Tablelands, which suggested that the south side of Cairns was inaccessible...

"Yeehah!" Roy exclaimed. "Now those zombies are going to get their arses handed to them!"

I felt a moment of excitement. "I hope so, Roy." The thought that this might all be over by tomorrow or Sunday was heady.

Driving along the highway flanked by canfields, a lone zombie stood beside the road, staring blankly ahead. Blood marred the whole left side of his body. A shiver went through Kaye's body.

"I knew you were telling the truth but to see it for myself..." She whispered. I nodded silently.

For the next several minutes, vehicles continued to pass us, heading into town. As we took the turnoff to the Tablelands, we fell in behind another civilian vehicle coming from the beaches, presumably with the same idea of leaving town via the mountain route.

"What the hell...?" Roy murmured. Before us, armed soldiers stood across the Tablelands road, backed by a tank blocking any passage. We slowed to a stop as a soldier with a loudspeaker moved forward.

"
There is a quarantine order in place. Please turn around and return to your homes
."

As the driver ahead of us pushed open his door and emerged, the soldier backed away rapidly. The other soldiers brought their weapons up sharply. "
Sir, return to your vehicle
immediately
."

As the driver, a solid dark-haired man in his mid thirties, continued to move forward, I started to get a bad feeling about this. The soldiers looked jittery and nervous and I could see this situation going bad quickly.

"We have orders to shoot, sir. Return to your vehicle now."

The driver paused. "You can't force us to stay here!" He yelled, gesticulating wildly. "It's not safe!"

The soldier lowered his loudspeaker. I heard his voice clearly as he tried to calm the driver down. "I understand, sir. However, you need to take your family home and make your house as secure as possible. Lay low and it will be over in a few days."

"Yeah, when my family and I have been killed by those lunatics!" The driver screamed, face red with frustration. He started to move forward again. "I want to talk to whoever is in charge of this goddamned operation!"

The soldier with the loudspeaker stumbled backwards as the other soldiers charged forward. "Move back, move back now!" They all yelled in agitation, guns raised to firing position.

"Oh my God." Kaye whispered, horrified. "Can't he see they mean business?! They are going to shoot him!"

The man hesitated, desperation etched in his body. He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. As he did so, his shirt fell away from his forearm, revealing a bandage. Instantly, the tension amongst the soldiers escalated. Their voices mingled incoherently as they shouted orders, guns aimed straight at him.

We watched, aghast, as the driver continued forward determinedly. A shot rang out and the man jerked. He touched his chest in surprise and then took another stumbling step forward. We watched in horror as a barrage of bullets pierced his body, causing him to jerk around in a grotesque caricature of a dance. As the noise faded away, his body collapsed to the road.

Agonised screams erupted from his car. The passenger door flung open and his wife ran out. I closed my eyes, unwilling to watch this disaster play out. The loudspeaker blasted a warning for the wife to stop. Hearing no more gunshots, I ventured a peek. The wife was on her knees a few feet from her husband's body, sobbing her heart out.

"He just wanted to get our baby to the hospital." She cried in grief and anger. "He didn't deserve to die, you bastards. You're supposed to protect us, not kill us!" She stretched out to touch her husband's foot.

"Your daughter's sick, ma'am?" The soldier's suddenly alert voice should have warned her but she was too distraught to notice. "Was she bitten?"

She sobbed. "She's unconscious. She needs treatment!"

Without a word, the soldiers circled around her towards the car, weapons high again. "Have you been bitten, ma'am?"

The young woman nodded, her eyes still glued to her husband's body. "I'm okay." She cried. "She just bit me on the finger."

She turned her eyes on the soldier pleadingly. "Please - just let me take my daughter to the hospital."

One of the soldiers glanced at us and talked into his walkie-talkie. As he moved towards us, my hand clenched the armrest instinctively. Kaye gasped nervously as he paused a few feet from our car. He held his gun casually but alertly.

"Sorry, ma'am, but there is a quarantine order in place. No one leaves the city. We need you to turn around and head back home. Now."

I nodded, my eyes never leaving his face. "We're leaving now."

Glancing at me, Kaye threw the car into reverse and slowly backed up some distance. Once we were out of range of his weapon, we started breathing again.

"Jesus." Roy exclaimed from the back seat. "I thought we were goners for a minute!"

"Me, too." I agreed shakily, as Kaye did a u-turn. The other car and woman were now ringed by armed soldiers. A soldier was cautiously poking his gun through the rear car window. The woman's posture was pleading as she begged them to help her. As we drove off, a volley of gunfire rang out, seeming to go on forever. I didn't look back. I couldn't bear to know.

****

Shaken, none of us said anything for several minutes as we headed for the Redlynch turnoff.

"What do you think it means?" Emma asked quietly.

"It means they are serious about containing this disease." I answered, equally softly. "And they are prepared to take any measures necessary to do so."

"Even killing innocent people." It was a statement, not a question.

"They did warn him." Roy added, halfheartedly. "But to kill the family like that! Jesus! There's no proof that
everyone
who gets bitten becomes a zombie!"