Now it was Juliet’s turn to stare at me. I raised an eyebrow—a trick I learned from Georgia Mason herself, back when I first started turning her dry sense of humor back on her.
“Well?” I asked. “I mean, I am a visiting journalist. Surely you wouldn’t be making jokes in such incredibly poor taste, which means you must have been telling the truth, and I’m truly interested in understanding the methodology of my potential demise.”
Juliet stared at me for a few more seconds before turning to Jack and asking, “Is he for real?”
“I haven’t known him in real-space for that much longer than you have, but he’s always like this online, so I’m going to guess that yeah, he’s for real.” Jack grinned. “I told you this was my boss. Did you think I was having you on?”
“I’m just pleased to see that you have a sense of humor,” I said.
Juliet’s head turned back toward me like it was on a swivel. “Really?” she said. “How do you know that I wasn’t serious?”
“Australia still has a tourist trade,” I replied.
Any further awkward banter was cut short by the return of the guard from before, now carrying a metal basket containing four blood testing units. “Your papers check out,” she said. “Give me a clean blood test and you’re good to head on through. If one of you fails, we’ll hold the others for an hour to see whether they’ve been infected and then pass any clean survivors through.”
“That’s a surprisingly sensible approach to security,” I said, taking a testing unit. “I’m very impressed, and whoever makes your policy should be commended.”
The guard nodded. She looked faintly pleased, which was nice. It’s always good to make the people with the rifles happy with you. “I’ll pass that along to my commanding officer,” she said. “Your travel papers said that your point of origin was London?”
“Heathrow,” I confirmed, as she walked around the Jeep passing out testing units. “I’m here to do a story on the rabbit-proof fence.”
“We’re part of fence security here,” she said, indicating her companions, who were once again mostly ignoring us. “If there’s any problem, we’re the ones who get mobilized to come in and take care of it.”
“That must be a really interesting job,” I said. “Would it be all right if I came back here and talked with you about it after we finished getting ourselves situated?”
The guard looked pleased. “Sure thing,” she said. “If I’ve gone off duty, just ask for Rachel, and someone will come and shake me out of whatever tree I’ve crawled into.”
“She’s half koala,” shouted one of the other guards. Maybe they’d been paying more attention than I thought. Relaxed and exposed as this station was, it was still an integral part of the security system protecting the longest contiguous fence in the world. They couldn’t afford to have any weak links in their protection or the whole thing could come tumbling down.
Rachel shot a quick glare at her coworker before holding out her basket. I looked at her blankly, and she nodded toward the test unit I was holding. “You’re clean,” she said. “I need that back so I can file it.”
I looked down. The unit had indeed lit up green, reacting to the blood sample it had taken from my finger. I didn’t even remember breaking the seal.
“Bloody jet lag,” I muttered, and dropped the test into the basket. “Thank you.”
“Welcome to the fence,” she replied, and repeated her circuit around the car, collecting the used test units from the rest of the group. All of them showed clean, which was unsurprising; unless swamp wallabies were infection vectors unmatched in the rest of the world, we hadn’t been exposed.
The thought sobered me, and I was quiet as Rachel waved good-bye and signaled for one of the other guards to open the gate and let us through. Australia was geographically isolated enough that it did not yet have to worry about the genetically engineered mosquitoes created by the CDC as new vectors for the Kellis-Amberlee infection. They would probably get here eventually; mosquitoes are notoriously tricky when it comes to finding ways to invade new habitats. Only the fact that any plane that contained one of the tiny insect hitchhikers had a tendency to crash following the amplification of its passengers and crew had kept Australia safe so far.
This was a perfect climate for the modified mosquitoes, and unlike North America, which had its brutal winters to help it fight against the invasive pests, Australia would be virtually unprotected when that dreadful day arrived. I barely noticed when Jack restarted the engine and we drove forward, heading toward the fence at last.
The road curved, and as we came around it and the rabbit-proof fence came into view, I lost any ability to remain detached—or objective.
The road ran through a small town that wouldn’t have been out of place in a photograph taken fifty years ago, if not for the metal shutters on the windows and the chain-link fences that surrounded each individual building. They were easily eight feet high, which would be enough to dissuade even the most persistent of human infected. All of them had double gates, and every gate I could see was standing open, as if an outbreak were less of a concern than not being able to go anywhere you wanted without hesitation. There were cars parked in front of the houses, and a few people stood on the sidewalks, talking about whatever it was that people who chose to live in an isolated part of Australia next to the world’s largest zombie holding pen had to worry about.
I took all this in in an instant, making sweeping judgments that I was sure to regret later, as my journalist’s mind insisted on sketching out the scene. We might have to flee at any moment, after all, when this ludicrous excuse for a secure fence came toppling over on our heads. If we were lucky, we might be able to make it out of the zone of infection before we became names on the Wall that commemorates all those who have died due to the Kellis-Amberlee virus.
The rabbit-proof fence was at least eighteen feet tall, topped in a triplicate row of electrified wire, with razor wire surrounding the base on both the interior and exterior sides. Floodlights illuminated the entire thing, bringing out every detail that I could possibly have wanted and quite a few that I didn’t. Thick posts were driven into the ground every eight feet, and the chain link was doubled, with thick sheets of clear Plexiglas sandwiched between the layers. No fluid transfer could get through that fence, and any impact against the chain link would bend it against the Plexiglas, rather than causing it to bow inward on empty space. It was a marvel of engineering. It was a monument to human ingenuity both during and following the Rising. And it was currently under siege by a mob of at least twenty infected kangaroos.
The kangaroos moaned in an unearthly key that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, even as it threatened to turn my bowels to water. Every bite of food I’d eaten since arriving in Australia was threatening to make a return appearance. My questions about the coordination of zombie kangaroos were being answered as I watched: The great beasts were clearly infected, and it wasn’t slowing them down a bit. In small groups, they pulled back from the fence and then bounded forward, their tails bobbing in an instinctive search for balance, before leaping into the air and flinging themselves against the chain link. Each time, they fell back to the ground, picked themselves up, and tried again.
Several humans stood inside the fence with rifles, watching the kangaroos attack, but none of them seemed particularly concerned. Even the man in the nearest sniper tower looked more interested in our car than he was in the mob of infected animals.
Jack stopped the car in the middle of the street, where we had an excellent view of the scene that was unfolding in front of us. “Well, here it is,” he said, “the famous Australian rabbit-proof fence. Is it everything that you’d hoped that it would be?”
In that moment, I couldn’t answer him. The words simply refused to come.
Part IV:
In Which There Are Kangaroos Absolutely Everywhere, and No One Is Properly Upset About the Situation
Everyone belongs somewhere. Some of us are just lucky enough to figure out where it is while there’s still time for us to find a way to get there. And once we arrive, we will never, ever leave.
—Juliet Seghers-Ward
There is nothing in this world as determined, or as terrifying, as an exile in search of a country.
—Mahir Gowda
1.
Our hotel, if you could call it that, was located on the very edge of the town. The room I was going to be sharing with Jack had a clear view of the fence and of the infected kangaroos that were still hurling themselves with mindless dedication against the barrier. The window was soundproof glass, which was a small mercy; I would never have been able to sleep with their moans echoing in my ears.
The town had no name, according to both Olivia and the man who took my name and credit card at the hotel desk; it was part military outpost and part curiosity, and “the place by the fence” did more than enough to describe the place to anyone who had any business coming here. The only roads that actually connected the place to anything beyond the airfield were government controlled and strictly regulated.
“It’s not that we don’t approve of rooking tourists out of every dollar they’re willing to dump into the local economy,” was what Jack had said as he and I toted our equipment up the stairs to our room. “It’s just that this part of the fence isn’t a tourist attraction, you follow? It’s a place you go when you have questions that need to be answered. No one should be posing for duck-lipped selfies with the plaque of the dead. It wouldn’t be right.”
“So why are we here?” I’d asked. I’d been asking myself that same question since we’d first come around the curve in the road and I’d seen, firsthand, that all those stories about Australia were not exaggerations. If anything, they had all been understating the case somewhat.
“Because you said you thought it would be interesting—and because it’s about time that someone who doesn’t come from here started to understand what’s really happening out here. Not everything important happens in Europe or North America, mate. There’s an awful lot of world that most people never seem to bother with.”