Part V:
In Which Everyone Is Very Relaxed about the Probable End of the World, and a Reporter Is Cast into Mortal Danger for No Good Reason
Science is a powerful force, but it will never be stronger than mankind’s capacity to be afraid of what we do not yet fully understand.
—Dr. Reynaldo Fajardo
As long as science keeps building better fences, I’m glad to go along with things, at least for the moment.
—Mahir Gowda
1.
It was well past noon by the time we emerged from the biological containment facility. Olivia was chattering a mile a minute as we stepped through the front doors. Most of her words were directed at Rey, who was joining us for lunch before he went back to work. I had tuned her out, choosing to devote my energy to contemplating the structure we’d just been walked through. Unless the government of Australia had structured their fence stations to conceal the true nature of their research into the Kellis-Amberlee virus, I was willing to accept that the rabbit-proof fence served exactly the purpose that had been advertised: It was a way of keeping Australia’s wildlife from eating the human population without resorting to bullets and extinction events. I even found myself considering ways that similar programs could be enacted in parts of the United States and Canada. There was enough open, empty land there; maybe the surviving native wildlife could be herded into a specific geographic region, and—
My thoughts derailed as Olivia put a hand on my arm, stopping me in midstep. I turned to blink at her before finally looking up and registering our surroundings.
“…ah,” I said. “Is this normal?”
“No,” said Olivia. “It’s not.”
What looked like the entire population of the nameless little town was assembled on the lawn of the biological containment facility. A line of guards stood between us and them, all with their guns at the ready. I recognized Rachel from the night before, and somehow, that just made the situation more worrisome. If they were calling in the checkpoint staff, this had to be something bad.
“Rey?” said Olivia.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Well, then, let’s find out,” I said, and started walking again, heading rapidly toward Rachel’s position. When I was close enough to talk without shouting, I said, “Rachel? It’s Mahir, from last night. Would you mind telling us what’s going on?”
“What’s going on is some damn fools trying to have a riot on government property,” she said.
“It’s not government property!” shouted someone from the edge of the crowd. “It’s our home!”
“Your home is built on government property,” Rachel shouted back. “And don’t think I don’t recognize you, Nicole Long, residential housing block B-3.”
“Because that’s not going to make people feel threatened,” I muttered. Louder, I asked, “Why, precisely, are people trying to have a riot? Aren’t we rather uncomfortably close to the fence for rioting? I feel like there should be a nice bus to take us somewhere safer to riot.”
“We live here, why should we go elsewhere to make our issues known?” demanded a man.
I was starting to feel uncomfortably like I was inciting both sides of the conflict, which could easily leave me standing in the middle when they opened fire. “All right, I can see that everyone here has a very good reason for what they’re doing right now, but as a foreigner, I have no idea what any of those good reasons are. Can someone please explain to me, in a quick, sound-bite-ready format, why there’s a large group of angry people being held off by the local military?”
A red-faced woman whose eyes were puffy from recent tears shoved her way forward, shouting, “Those bastards pretend we’re secure, but we’re not! They pretend nothing can get through the fence, but they’re wrong! Then they go threatening legal action because somebody finally did what we’ve all been dreaming of doing for years, and where were they with their legal actions when my Paul was disappearing, huh? Where were they then?”
“Oh, Lord,” said Rey, covering his face with one hand.
I glanced quickly in his direction. “Care to explain?”
“That’s Karen Langmore. She’s a local—very local. Her family lived out here before the Rising, and they’ve never considered moving anywhere else. She thinks a kangaroo came over the fence and stole her son a year ago.”
“I don’t think!” the woman—Karen—shouted. “I know! Your fence isn’t keeping them out, it’s keeping us stupid and snowed, so that we don’t move out of range!”
“If that’s true, why hasn’t anyone else been attacked?” asked Rachel. She had the Irwin trick of pitching her voice from the back of her throat down cold: She didn’t seem to be shouting, but everyone could hear her. “Why haven’t we been dealing with outbreaks on a monthly basis? There’s no way those animals are getting past the fence! All you’re doing is whipping folks into a useless panic, and people are going to get hurt!”
“If you won’t protect us from the infected, we’ll have to protect ourselves!” shouted a man.
Rachel turned toward him, eyes narrowed. “Are you making threats toward the local wildlife? Because that’s against the law.”
“I’m not threatening anyone,” the man snapped. “I’m saying that sometimes, people have to matter more than animals, no matter how ‘endangered’ those animals are.”
The guards were starting to mutter mutinously. If this didn’t break up soon, it was going to turn ugly for everyone.
Newsies are supposed to stay above the story whenever possible, but I knew from bitter experience that “staying above the story” wouldn’t keep the bullets from flying in my direction. “If I may?” I said, stepping forward so that I was between Rachel and the crowd. “Hello. I don’t know how many of you know me, but my name is Mahir Gowda. I’m a journalist from England, and I’ve come to see the rabbit-proof fence.”
The crowd grumbled and glared, but no one shouted, and no one shot at me. For the moment, I was willing to take that as a victory.
“I will be reporting fairly and honestly on what I see here. The Australian government has no authority over me once I leave your country, and I’m too well known to simply ‘disappear.’ I assure you, if I find that your concerns are founded, I will be trumpeting them to the heavens before anyone realizes that they should be devoting resources to stopping me.”
“They’ll just buy you off like they do everyone else!”
“My integrity is not for sale,” I said witheringly. “If there is a problem—if my research confirms that there is a problem—then I will report on it. Of that, you have my word.”
“He’s not the only one,” said Olivia, stepping forward to stand beside me. “But this isn’t the right way to make us want to tell your stories. You’re going to get us all shot, and then who’s going to tell the truth? Nobody. You’ll bury your lead in a hail of bullets, and no one will care enough to dig it up.”
“Not only that, but if you do not disperse within the next thirty seconds, I’m having you all arrested for forming an infection hazard near the fence,” said Rachel. I glanced her way, startled. She wasn’t looking at me, or at Olivia; all her attention was on the crowd. “Go home. Don’t do this again. Next time, you won’t have a bunch of idiot journalists looking to sniff out a scandal just standing by. Next time, somebody’s getting hurt.”
“It won’t be who you think,” snapped Karen…but there was no heat in it. The wind had been stolen from her sails by logic and by danger, and she was just shouting for the sake of hearing herself. Someone in the crowd put an arm around her shoulders, tugging her away, and she went without a fight.
The rest of the crowd dispersed quickly after that, although not without more than a few glares and muttered expletives. Rachel and the other guards remained exactly where they were, none of them moving so much as a muscle until the last of the prospective rioters had moved out of view. I breathed out, relieved, only to choke on my own exhale as Rachel grabbed the front of my shirt and hauled me toward her.
“What in the blue suffering f**k was that?” she demanded. “Are you an idiot, or are you just too convinced of your own invincibility to see when you’re risking your life for absolutely bloody nothing?”
“I would find it much easier to answer your questions if you weren’t physically threatening me,” I said. My voice came out surprisingly level. “Please let go.”
To my relief, Rachel did. “Those people are all noise and no action. You had no reason to step up like that. You could have actually triggered the damn riot.”
“I’ve never seen them this bad before,” said Rey.
I blinked as I glanced his way. In all the excitement, I’d almost forgotten that he was there. “You mean this has happened before?” I asked.
“About once a week since Karen decided that it was kangaroos that were to blame for her Paul disappearing,” said Rachel grimly. “She gets everyone worked up over the injustice, and then someone remembers that we keep live specimens in the biological containment facility, and there’s a march on the place, like we won’t be standing in the way with guns in our hands. Maybe they’re hoping to eventually wear us down, convince us that we should ‘forget’ to show up where we’re supposed to be. I don’t know, and honestly, I don’t care. She’s a grieving woman. That doesn’t give her the freedom to disrupt the peace.”
“Please don’t take this as me siding with her, but…is there any chance she’s correct? Any chance at all?”
Rachel sighed, giving me a weary look. “Well, I don’t know. Which do you think is more likely: A zombie kangaroo somehow found a hole in the fence, snuck through without attracting any attention from its fellows, made its way through the town without being seen, ignored multiple easy, delicious targets, and finally stole a toddler from inside his bedroom? Or something else happened? I don’t know what that something else might be. Maybe the kid’s father came back. Maybe it was a stranger abduction. We looked into it and we didn’t find anything, but if it was an infected kangaroo, it was the smartest damn zombie I’ve ever heard of, and we should just start evacuating the continent now. Humans are finished in Australia if the zombie kangaroos are learning how to open windows.”