Plague War: Outbreak Read online

  ‘Cease your movement or you will be fired upon!’ roared Sergeant Novak through the speaker. Again, no response. He dropped the microphone, now addressing the police in line. ‘Bean bag guns, take aim at front runners.’

  Penny raised her beanbag gun knowing that it would prove futile, and took aim at a woman twenty metres away. She had dirty blond hair, raggedly strewn about her shoulders, a soiled white business shirt above a knee length black skirt, her feet bloodied and bare. A chef’s knife stood proud from her neck, buried to the last few inches of the wide blade, probably the last act of defiance by the donor of the blood slicked across her mouth. A chunk of flesh was missing from one of her calves.

  ‘Fire!’

  Penny pulled her trigger. The gun made a hollow popping noise as the wide round escaped the barrel. It hit the infected woman in her left shoulder, knocking her off balance briefly, before she continued forward again. Down the line, the officers had the same experience, with only two carriers of infection momentarily thrown off their feet by the non-lethal rounds.

  ‘Draw batons!’ ordered Novak.

  Long nightsticks appeared in the officers’ hands, held at the ready beside their shields.

  The Infected were now on them, hands groping forward, teeth bared and gnashing.

  Penny rammed her Perspex shield into a corpse knocking it off its feet. Another took its place immediately, grabbing the upper rim of the shield, ripping it aside to reach her. She brought the baton down in a savage arc onto the extended forearm, and was rewarded with an audible snapping of bone. Oblivious to the injury, it came onwards. Penny’s foot stumbled, her right knee gave way and she was falling backwards, the ghoul following her to the ground. Her shield was lost in the fall. Penny swapped her nightstick to her left hand and reached for her Glock with her right. She managed to jam the baton into the open jaws of the Infected as it fell onto her. She felt its teeth shatter as it clenched down on the weapon, while one of its hands sought the gap between her shoulder and mask into her neck. Jamming the pistol into its chest, Penny fired twice, the torso above her only twitched with the bullet’s passing. It raised itself onto its knees to better get at her upper body, and Penny fired twice more in desperation. The first round went through its neck, the second higher, entering its face between upper lip and nose, blowing a large hole out the back of the skull. The creature slumped off her, dead once more.

  Penny dragged herself out from underneath the corpse and back to her feet, sobs of terror exiting her mouth. Her training had led her to shoot centre-mass without effect, and yet the accidental headshot had worked. Jesus; Dino was right, they’re fucking zombies.

  The whole line was being overwhelmed. She saw a Newtown officer pulled into the Infected mob and disappear under a tide of reaching hands and mouths. His screams of agony brought bile to Penny’s mouth. Another of her colleagues from the Kogarah station was down, his helmet ripped from his face. Penny took two strides closer, pushed the muzzle against the skull of the Infected monster leaning over him, and fired. Brain matter splattered onto the road as it fell motionless to the ground.

  She leant a hand to pull him to his feet. They had to fall back, and thankfully, her sergeant had come to the same conclusion.

  ‘Fall back! Disengage and retreat northwards,’ Novak yelled, indicating up King Street towards the university.

  Half of the group were able to pull backwards and create space, the rest were either dead or being pulled back into the flesh machine and out of reach. The survivors turned and ran as a group. Many of the Infected remained, feasting on the fallen, while others continued their steady, slow pursuit of the riot squad.

  The police officers re-grouped at the entrance to the university. They had put a few blocks between themselves and the mob. Penny pulled off her helmet to wipe condensation from the inside of the Perspex face shield, taking a knee on the ground. They had lost half their numbers, an unprecedented failure and loss of police life. The group was clearly shaken; the first sergeant that had recommended use of maximum force had not made it through the second confrontation.

  Sergeant Novak radioed to base, requesting pickup for his staff. He was refused. There were no available police units to spare; all were in engaged and unable to be extricated. They were on their own.

  ‘We need somewhere that’s easier to defend, Sarg,’ Penny said.

  Novak nodded. ‘Agreed. We’ll fall back into the university, find a building with windows and doors raised off the ground.’

  ‘Those things weren’t human anymore,’ said one of the cops, stating what most of them had been thinking since the confrontation began.

  ‘I shot one three times in the chest and neck, and it barely flinched,’ Penny said.

  The sergeant closed his eyes briefly, grimacing, then opened them to meet his officers’ gaze steadily. ‘I fucked up. I should have taken that other sergeant’s advice, but I couldn’t shoot to kill without finding out if anything else would stop them first. Would you have really wanted that order?’

  There were a few heads that shook in a no; most people dropped their eyes, glad to have not been carrying the weight of leadership earlier.

  ‘I won’t make the mistake twice,’ he said. ‘They were human once, but that ended when they died the first time around. Whatever it is that comes back – that’s an abomination.’

  The surrounding officers nodded in agreement.

  ‘They got a number of our men and women, and I’ll never forget that,’ he said. ‘Did any of you manage to kill one of them? None of the ones I shot stayed down.’

  ‘I killed two of them with rounds to the head,’ Penny said. ‘I also shot one in the chest and neck, but those spots didn’t make any difference, it was only a head shot that worked.’

  ‘Ok, from here on in, we put them down as needed. If there are any legal ramifications – it was a direct order from me. I’ll wear the consequences, ok?’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Guys, they’re coming again, maybe we should clear out,’ said one of the cops, pointing in the direction from which they’d come.

  Penny looked around, and sure enough, they had more company than she cared for. Not only was the swarm now only a hundred metres away, but the adjacent student union building had just spewed twenty of the Infected onto the street to join the fun.

  ‘Keep close, let’s go,’ said the sergeant, moving into the University precinct.

  The cops took off in a tight group, the last three of them walking backwards to keep an eye on their followers.

  As they passed a road between buildings, a snarling issued from the side. They’d walked right into a pack of them. Gunfire buffeted her eardrums as the officers on that side of the group fired at near point-blank range. At such proximity, most shots hit home, blasting heads apart, splattering the concrete with brain matter and splintered bone. The new strategy worked, not one remained standing – they’d found a way to stop them.

  The Infected were closing in. Penny took aim and fired at the closest one ‒ a boy of about eighteen with a grossly broken neck. The round punctured dead centre of face, obliterating his nose and flicking the head backwards.

  The group was now firing upon attackers on three sides as they kept a steady pace. Making a stand would be certain death; they had to keep moving. Between the gunfire, voices called out to them. They were approaching some of the oldest buildings in the university, the cloisters and main hall. At the top of a flight of steps, two men held a heavy wooden door ajar, yelling for them to come inside.

  Novak saw them and led the group in that direction. At the base of the steps, the Sergeant stood his ground, sending the remaining officers up while he held off the approaching Infected. He fired at a metronomic pace, one shot every second. Each shot hit home. He climbed the steps backwards, continuing his fire until the magazine ran empty. Penny stepped forward and covered him, firing as he made his way inside. Penny slammed the door shut and slid the deadbolt home.

  They were safe again for the moment
; however, the length of that time depended upon how easily they could defend the building. They jogged down a short corridor and found themselves in an open quadrangle. A huge Jacaranda tree had pride of place in the bottom right corner; the rest of the area was an expanse of luxuriant grass. They weren’t the only ones taking cover here; at least seventy people were present, a mix of students and staff.

  Penny ducked back inside, found a set of stairs that led her to an upper-floor window on the King Street side of the building complex. She looked out over Newtown and Erskineville. Smoke rose from at least three locations. The noise of the infected mass was loud, even from her new elevation.

  The university streets were jammed full of a writhing mass of walking dead. They had drawn the swarm from Newtown after them with the sound of gunfire. Penny looked in the direction of her house in Kogarah, and prayed that her family was still safe. She gnawed at her bottom lip as she wiped a lone, frustrated tear from her eye. How the hell was she supposed to get back to them now?

  Chapter Ten

  Mark pulled into the university precinct from the northern entrance on Parramatta Road, then drove slowly up a small street towards the Quadrangle. So far, he hadn’t seen any carriers of infection. He pulled into a parking space fifty metres from the building’s end, cut the engine and texted Georgie to say he would be at the northern gate in two minutes. The Quadrangle was one of the oldest and most beautiful building complexes in the university, with gothic features reminiscent of Cambridge. Built with golden coloured sandstone in the mid-1800s, it made the adjacent modern buildings seem out of place and depressingly plain.

  At the north end of the Quadrangle lay the Great Hall, and behind it a concealed entrance way; it was to this gate that Mark and Peter approached. Mark held his rifle loosely as they jogged through the fading light of evening. Georgie stood in the shadows of the arch, waiting for him. She unlocked the gate, letting them both in and dived into Mark, burying her head into his shoulder. Mark hugged her close with his free hand, then moved backwards slightly so he could see her face.

  ‘My car’s not far away, is there anything you need to get before we leave?’

  Georgie frowned. ‘Mark, we can’t go yet. There’s a crowd of Infected on the other side of the Quad. If we run into part of that mob, we’d be slaughtered. There’s police here as well now, part of the riot squad I saw earlier. Won’t we be safer as part of a larger group?’

  Mark paused; she could have a point, especially if some of them were armed and trained. ‘Ok,’ he sighed. Georgie leant forward and kissed him, making his grimace soften. ‘Let me get my gear before any of those creeps work their way around to this side.’

  Mark jogged back to the ute in the gathering dark. His vehicle was the last in a line of university cars behind a white minibus. The lights down the street began to pop on intermittently as daylight faded, while the first of the night’s bats flitted amongst shadows between the trees. He kept the rifle in hand while reaching in the back door for his duffle bag.

  A scraping sound on the concrete made him turn. Mark pulled the rifle to his shoulder as he spun to see who was there. He found himself looking over his sights at a startled Peter, frozen to the spot.

  ‘You might want to give me some notice next time, mate, if you don’t want to end up shot,’ Mark said, dropping the rifle from his shoulder and picking up the bag again.

  ‘Fuck, but you’re quick with that thing,’ breathed Peter, now that the end of the barrel wasn’t looking dead at him. ‘Sorry, I was trying to avoid calling any of those dead bastards to us by yelling out, that’s all’. Peter looked past him into the ute and noticed the webbing belt. ‘Are you in the army?’

  ‘Yeah, something like that,’ mumbled Mark, as he transferred the boxes of ammunition into the duffle bag.

  ‘My dad was a Vietnam veteran. Refused to talk about it much, just told me that he’d cut me off if I ever joined the forces.’

  ‘Must be a smart guy. I’d think twice before joining up if I had my time again.’

  ‘Did you get deployed?’

  ‘Afghanistan more than a few times. Iraq once.’ Mark shoved the door closed, and paused, cocking one ear up. ‘Do hear that?’

  They both turned in the direction of the noise. Further down the street, three figures were approaching up the slope. The front person was dragging a damaged leg; another missed an arm below the elbow. Faces were indistinguishable in the shadows cast by the street lighting, but their sound carried, that unmistakable moaning-snarl of the Infected.

  ‘Time to get back, eh?’ Mark said.

  The two of them jogged back to the Quadrangle entrance. Two tall iron gates topped with wicked spikes blocked the thoroughfare, beyond which lay a wide passage beneath the building above. The passage was pitch black, with the exit into the heart of the Quadrangle a lighter shade of grey thirty metres distant. Walking under the immense weight of stone in the passage felt like entering the confines of a castle, and Mark could now understand the visceral pull the structure must have had on students and teachers as a place of refuge. Unfortunately, although the grandiosity of the buildings gave an impression of permanence and invulnerability, they hadn’t been designed to withstand a siege. There were countless entrances through rear buildings, many of which had windows at head height. If the numbers of Infected swelled outside, they’d find themselves trapped.

  The three of them exited the tunnel into the interior of the Quadrangle. Brick paths bisected an open square filled with soft grass. The edges of the lawn met covered walkways with vaulted ceilings. The sandstone buildings surrounding the square rose three storeys into the air. On the eastern side, a large square clock tower soared like a castle citadel, commanding an impressive view across the parklands that descended away from the university towards the city.

  An old Jacaranda tree dominated the far left-hand corner of the grassed area. The branches had lost their leaves for the winter, stretching outwards like fine silver bones in the moonlight. People were gathering at its base for a meeting called by a police sergeant. Members of the riot squad could be seen gathering people from the covered walkways to take part in the discussion. Without need for encouragement, they headed over to hear what he had to say.

  ‘My name’s Sergeant Novak of the Newtown police. As you already know, we have found ourselves in a dangerous situation,’ he said as introduction.

  ‘That’s the understatement of the year,’ someone said in the crowd.

  ‘True. Therefore, you understand the need for us to work as a group to stop the situation from getting any worse,’ Novak replied. ‘We need to make this quadrangle as secure as possible, starting with sealing all entrances. The iron gates at each arch are now locked, however, I want them barricaded. The Infected seem to be drawn in by sight and sound primarily, therefore I want fields of vision blocked, and noise kept to a minimum. You can see ten of my officers to the right; divide yourselves between them to make teams. Let’s get this done quickly,’ he said.

  The people on the lawn milled around for a few seconds, looking uncertain.

  ‘If you want us to keep you alive, we need your help, so get moving. Now!’ ordered Novak.

  The added verbal force to the order got the correct response, as those present quickly lined up behind the respective officers. Once all were accounted for, the groups separated to different areas of the quadrangle. Bench seats and tables were carried from the surrounding lecture halls and rooms to block each of the entrances to the courtyard. Doorways to adjoining buildings at the back of the complex were locked and covered. Despite the efforts to stifle noise, the movement of heavy items had invariably drawn some of the Infected from the southern end around to the eastern gates; their presence announced by snarls echoing down the blocked stone entrance tunnels.

  Penny walked up to Novak who was standing in the open, overseeing the different groups. ‘I think we’re almost finished, Sarg,’ she said.

  ‘Good. I just got an update from the station. They st
ill want us to stay put, reckon they’re working on getting us out tomorrow. But the fucking city’s falling apart around us, so personally, I doubt it’s going to happen,’ Novak said.

  ‘I take it, that won’t be the version you tell the rest of the people here, Sarg?’ Penny said, one eyebrow raised in concern.

  Mark, who had walked quietly up to the pair, interrupted the two officers. ‘We need a better plan than just blocking the entrances and hoping they don’t hassle us.’

  ‘And you are?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘Mark. Australian Army, engineers. I’ve just spent the last three years building defensive bases for the Americans and Australian troops in Afghanistan. I might be able to help if you let me.’

  ‘OK, what do you suggest?’

  ‘I agree with what you’ve done so far, but I don’t think much can be done with the external rooms and windows. They’re head height above the ground in most places, which may be enough of a deterrent anyway. From what I’ve seen of those walking corpses, they don’t seem that smart – just bloody persistent. If they come here en mass though, they’ll probably end up climbing over each other to smash through the glass.’

  ‘Personally, I’m hoping we’re out of here before it gets to that stage,’ Penny said.

  ‘Me too, but let’s prepare for it anyway. Keep all people out of ground floor rooms with external windows. And we need a fall-back area that’s defendable. I think the Great Hall would do the job well enough,’ Mark said.

  The sergeant looked over Mark’s shoulder towards the Great Hall in the northeast corner of the Quadrangle. It was a massive structure with sandstone walls. Critically, it had only two access points. One massive set of thick wooden doors opened to the park, another smaller set to the courtyard, and all windows were at least six metres above the ground.

  ‘If I was running the show, which I’m not,’ continued Mark, ‘I’d move all people into the Great Hall where I could keep them under observation, and away from where they’ll attract unwanted notice of the Infected. Post sentries around the courtyard perimeters to listen for any breaches in the external windows, then we can direct any response needed, and hopefully stop a break-in before it escalates out of control.’