Olivia laughed. “I think I like this version of original-recipe Georgia better than the saintly one you normally talk about in interviews.”
I smiled. “Yes. Me, too.”
Part III:
Small Planes, Large Fences, and a Rather Daunting Number of Zombie Kangaroos, Because That Is Exactly What This Day Needed
Every kind of Irwin wants you to think they have the most dangerous possible environment. Urban Irwins sneer at wilderness Irwins and so on down the line. I have Australia. I win.
—Jack Ward
I was unaware that Darwinism was a race.
—Mahir Gowda
1.
We talked for a while longer about the early days of After the End Times—that brief, beautiful period between the beginning of Peter Ryman’s campaign to become President of the United States and the point at which people started actively trying to kill us—before Jack and Olivia seemed to be satisfied by my answers. They quieted, and I turned back to my typing.
Running a site the size of After the End Times means there’s always something to do, even if it’s just checking moderator forums and clearing out spam filters. Sometimes it also means admitting that you’re several time zones away from home, and that there’s a reason you have a staff. I yawned, closed my laptop, and put my head against the window, and that was the last that I knew of the world for several hours.
When I awoke, Olivia was shaking my arm, an amused expression on her face. “Does everyone from England go to sleep the minute you load them into a car, or is that something that’s uniquely you?” she asked. “Because I have to say, I don’t think much of it as a survival mechanism.”
“Jet lag is a cruel mistress,” I said piously, before yawning and stretching as best I could while still strapped into my seat. “Where are we?”
“Adelaide,” said Olivia. “Welcome to the Gretchen Monroe Memorial Airfield.” Seeing the confusion written wide across my face, she added, “Gretchen Monroe was the manager here when the Rising started. She kept the gates open and the fuel pumps live long enough to get twenty-three planes into the air—virtually every craft they could find that was capable of flight—before the infected swarmed and she went down. She was a hero.”
“She certainly sounds like one,” I said, making a private note to look up her information once we were finished with the fence. A few articles on the Australian Rising wouldn’t be a bad idea, and stories like Gretchen’s were always good for page hits. People like to read about heroism, especially when it happened very far away and there’s no chance that they’ll be called upon to do the same.
“Come on, you lazy bastards,” called Jack. I looked toward his voice, finally registering our surroundings: We were parked in a small fenced lot, outside a low, tin-roofed building that looked like it had been lifted straight from a picture book. Beyond it stretched a wide swath of concrete, glimmering slightly with heat haze in the late-afternoon sun. “We’ve got to get into the air if we’re going to make it to Nullarbor tonight.”
“We’re coming,” Olivia shouted back, and reached past me to grab a backpack from the seat well. “Come on, boss. We need to move before Jack spontaneously combusts.”
“I’d like to see that,” I said, and followed her.
The land around the airfield was flat, cleared of the trees that I had come to associate with everything outside the cities in Australia. Brightly colored birds hopped and twittered in the fields, but nothing larger moved there. It should have been peaceful. Instead, it was unnerving, like the pause that comes directly before a storm.
Jack was the first one to the door, naturally, although he waited until we had reached the porch before he slapped his hand down on a blood testing unit. A few seconds passed, and a light above the doorframe turned green. There was a click. The door slid open.
“See you in a minute,” said Jack, and let himself inside.
“Cheeky,” said Olivia, not disapprovingly. “You next, Mahir. I’ll cover the rear.”
“Thanks,” I said, and approached the blood testing unit, taking a moment to consider its structure before I pressed my hand against the contact plate. It was a larger testing surface than I normally saw back in London, but that didn’t make it old-fashioned or less than functional; judging by the sturdiness of the construction, this unit was as big as it was because it was military-grade. Australia might go out of its way to seem laid-back about the threat of Kellis-Amberlee and the infected, but when you looked beneath the superficial calm, their protections had teeth.
The green light turned on for me as well, and I stepped through the newly opened door into a room that looked even more old-fashioned than its exterior. A long wooden desk split the space into two halves, and a large oil painting of a young woman with green-tipped hair and a classic “f**k the world” stare stood on an easel, with a plaque identifying her as “Our Founder.” Corkboards festooned with maps and paper notices lined the walls. Jack was leaning against the desk, flirting amiably with a redheaded man in mechanic’s overalls. They both looked around at the sound of the door closing behind me. Jack grinned.
“Mahir Gowda, meet George Maxwell, airfield general manager. Max, meet Mahir Gowda, my boss.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Max, running the words together so that they became virtually one. “Heading for Nullarbor, aren’t you?”
“To refuel, yes,” I said. “From there, we’re heading for…” I stopped, looking hopelessly at Jack.
“Dongara,” he said. “We’ll be catching a car from there to the fence.”
“Long trip for a foreign boy,” said Max. “You could save yourself some trouble, buy a few postcards of the fence and head on home.”
“Thank you, but I’d like to actually see it for myself,” I said politely.
Jack laughed. “I told you he wouldn’t go for it, didn’t I?” he said. “You owe me five dollars. Pay up.”
“I’m not sure whether I should be offended or not,” I said, as Max dug out his wallet, scowling, and slapped a five-dollar bill into Jack’s hand.
“Be flattered,” said Olivia, stepping up behind me. “Most of the time when we have tourists, Jack’s betting on how long it’ll take them to change their tickets so they can get back to a ‘civilized’ country a little sooner.”
“They can’t actually be saying that they’re leaving because Australia isn’t ‘civilized,’” I said, unable to keep myself from sounding appalled.
“Welcome to Murderland,” said Olivia bitterly. She turned to Max. “Who’s our pilot?”
“Juliet,” said Max. “Where’s my fee?”
“Here you go.” She walked past us to set a small cooler on the counter. “Zane’s special brownies and some of Hotaru’s vanilla shortbread. Zane says hello, Hotaru says you’re an arsehole.”
“Sounds about right,” said Max, as he made the cooler vanish under the counter. Turning, he bellowed, “Oy, Juliet! Your fare’s here!”
“I do love the civility and refinement of this establishment, don’t you, Jack?” said Olivia mildly.
“It’s a real treat,” Jack agreed.
I shook my head, leaving them to their banter, and turned to better study the office, looking for signs that might indicate how good the security was. After my second scan of the corners, I found them: a thin wire ran along the edge of the wall, almost obscured by the general clutter. Tracing it with my eyes, I saw that it vanished beneath the corkboard and that more wires were concealed behind the other boards. We were in the center of a very well-monitored web of sensors, and while they might all be air quality and sound-based, that wouldn’t make a difference if someone infected managed to get into the building. There’s more than one way of detecting an outbreak.
“Why are you trying so hard to look unsafe?” I asked, as I considered the near-invisible outline of a blast shutter, painted to appear like it was just another part of the wall. “Is it because you want to discourage tourism, or is there a deeper reason?” I turned back to Max. He was gaping at me.
Several seconds passed with nothing being said.
“Well?” I prompted finally.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“Those wires.” I pointed. “There’s no reason for that distribution unless you’re filtering the air looking for signs of Kellis-Amberlee infection. It’s a good way of avoiding any local regulations about security cameras, although I can’t imagine why you’d have those out here, but it’s not the sort of thing that goes with your ‘we’re too wild and carefree to worry about security’ image. So why are you trying so hard?”
“He’s got you, Maxie,” said Jack, sounding amused. “You’d best tell him, or you’ll become his new pet project, and that’s never a fun place to be.”
“I think I should be offended by that statement, but I’m not,” I said. “Well?”
Max scowled at me before saying, “Look. Lots of tourists who want to see ‘the real Australia’ make it this far, or as far as places like this one, and they say they want to ‘go bush,’ which they think is a real thing that people really say, because they’re all mental. They’re looking for theme park adventure, and if they make it past me, that’s not what they’re going to get. They’re going to get real pain, real danger, and very possibly, real death. Tourist deaths are bad for business. So those of us who stand at the border between ‘exciting but safe’ and ‘you’ll get your damn fool arse killed’ sometimes have to make a little show of how dangerous things really are.”
“That makes perfect sense,” I said. “I’ll be sure to include a comment about how terrifying this place was when I write the posts about this part of my trip.”