Tankbread 02 Immortal (32 page)

“Where is the nursery?”

“In the first dorm room upstairs.”

Else turned to walk away and then stopped. “Your clone work. It’s dangerous. Don’t you understand? The Adam virus, it is in everything. You can do so much to rebuild the world; don’t fuck it up by making new monsters to hunt us to extinction.” Still naked, she walked out of the lab, closing the door behind her, shutting off Donna’s angry shouts.

The dormitory was easy enough to find. Else remembered it from when she had stayed at the convent of Saint Peter’s Grace previously. The dorm was like a hospital ward, with a row of beds on each side. A room at the end closest to the stairs now contained cots, baskets, and incubators. When Else looked in, most of the baby stations were empty. Her baby was asleep in the middle of a cot. Else left him there and went to the nearest cupboard. Opening it, she took out clothes and dressed quickly, searching two more closets to find boots that fit her comfortably.

Gathering up her baby and securing him in a blanket sling around her chest, Else headed to the top of the stairs and then froze. Voices raised in anger erupted from the level below. From the sounds of it, Donna had been rescued.

Else headed along the dorm. The window at the end led to an outside staircase, a fire escape. She opened the window and hurried down the creaking metal stairs.

The sun was setting in the west, leaving Else unsure of how long she had been unconscious and tied up. Had it only been a couple of hours? Or had an entire night and day passed?

Armed women were coming out of the convent building, spreading out in a search pattern. Else started running, getting to the compound wall and then moving along in its shadow. The gate had closed, so Else jumped on the back of a parked wagon and with the baby heavy against her front she jumped. Her hands caught the edge of the top ledge. Her knees slammed into the white stone blocks, shielding the baby from the impact.

Pulling herself up, Else stood on the top of the wall. From up here, the ground looked a long way down. There were no convenient wagons to jump down onto. She took a deep breath and turned to face the convent buildings. Jumping backwards, she slapped her hands and booted toes against the sheer surface of the wall. In the three seconds it took her to reach the ground she left a smeared trail of bloody handprints on the wall.

“Fuck,” Else muttered as she hobbled away into the rising darkness.

Mildura lay in near darkness, campfires providing the only light source. Else slipped past the sentries, men and women armed with rifles and bows. It didn’t take her long to find the quarantine zone where her people were being kept behind a mesh fence, under armed guard.

Moving carefully, Else took up a position where she could watch the two perimeter guards from cover. They followed a casual pattern that made it hard to establish a routine to their patrol. They stopped and chatted with each other before meandering off along the fence line.

Else went to the darkest corner of the quarantine zone and hissed to get the prisoner’s attention.

“Where’s Rache?” she whispered.

The girl came forward, her mouth set in a furious line.

“The fuck is going on here, Else? You said we would be safe here. This was a place where we would be welcomed. Instead we’re penned up like . . . like we’re still on the ship.”

“I’ll get you out. You’re safe in there. It’s only for a few days, until they process you.”

“What the fuck does that mean? Process?”

“I think they want to make sure you are healthy and they want to write down who you are and what you can do to help around here.”

“That sounds like bullshit,” Eric said, pushing his way through the watchful crowd that had gathered at the fence.

Else looked both ways; the guards would appearing any moment now. “Keep quiet, do what they tell you. I will be back.” The baby started to grizzle in his sling. Else slipped away into the darkness without another word.

She toured the town. Women and babies seemed common enough, so when she sat down to nurse the baby, very few people took notice. Those who did smiled at the scene.

It became clear that there were two groups within the Mildura community. The first were the women and men that Sister Mary and her followers had gathered in the first weeks after Donna Preston’s arrival. They were marked with crosses, some painted on their foreheads or across the bridge of the nose. The others were what Else considered civilians, regular people. Men, women, and children of all races and creeds. They were building and surviving, accepting whatever laws and rules Sister Mary placed on them in return for some kind of security and maybe even a little bit of hope.

Else found a building with a large room filled with beds. No one complained when she took an empty one and closed her eyes. Baby cuddled against her.

She slept until dawn, waking up to feed the baby only once during the night. In the morning she found a communal bathroom where she could wash the baby and herself. Food was also communal, people gathering at trestle tables to help themselves to a breakfast of cooked eggs, large loaves of sliced bread, and fresh fruit.

The quarantine people had food taken to them, which they ate without question or complaint. Else couldn’t shake the nagging sense of unease. Donna’s plans were dangerous, and Else was never going to let her touch the baby again.

After exploring the town, Else concluded that no matter what was happening here, the clone research and whatever projects Donna was working on, the people of the new Mildura knew nothing about it. They spent the day farming, building houses, and taking care of children.

In the afternoon, two new survivors arrived. A man and a woman, both gaunt and looking half-starved. They shuffled into the quarantine zone and didn’t show any sign of life until they were offered food and water. They fell on the sustenance, cramming food into their mouths and drinking water till they almost choked. Else wondered how they had survived as long as they did.

When darkness eventually fell, she made her way back to the quarantine pen. The gates were opened and the survivors from the ship were being guided out. They were all given a tag to wear around their necks. It had their name, blood type, and a barcode on it.

“Just until everyone gets to know you and we have some kind of medical record for each of you,” was the explanation.

“So what now? We can go where we want?” Rache asked.

“Absolutely. We recommend you stay within the community area. Wandering outside of the fences can be dangerous.”

“We have survived all kinds of shit,” Rache said. “This place is like paradise by comparison.”

“There are spare beds in the communal dorms. We’re building new houses at a rate of about one a week. They’re not much but it’s a start.” The survivors were escorted to the same long building that Else had spent the night in. She kept in the shadows, alert for any sign of the convent operatives. The people of Mildura didn’t seem to be looking for her or even know who she was.

“Eric,” Else said, drawing him aside as the people filed past. “I’ve seen some things around here that might be useful for making stuff. Like what we used on the ship.”

Eric did a double take. “Are you fucking kidding me? Why would we want to blow shit up around here?”

“There’s more going on here than you think,” Else replied.

“I know, stuff like hot showers, fresh food, a bed to sleep in.”

“It’s more than that. Get Rache. Meet me over there, by the kitchen place.” Else slipped away, leaving Eric shaking his head and moving after the others.

The temporary accommodation of the communal room was filled with the survivors. Most settled on beds with their children cuddled against them. Some simply sat on the floor with their backs against the wall and slept.

Rache and Eric wandered around the community encampment; they found Else leaning against the back wall of a building used as a communal kitchen.

“I need you to make something that will burn. Something that will burn really well,” Else said to Eric.

“Anything else?” Eric asked.

“Can you do it?” Else responded.

“Make you some kind of Molotovs? Sure I can do that. Let me just wander down to the local gas station and pick up some kitchen supplies.”

Else slammed Eric against the wall. “Smarten the fuck up, Eric,” she snarled into his startled expression as the baby started to cry at the sudden movement.

“Okay . . . It’s okay. I’ll see what I can find.” Eric pushed her hands away.

“What the fuck is going on, Else?” Rache demanded.

“Donna Preston, she’s making new clones. She wants to repeat the experiments that created the evols in the first place.” Else shushed the baby and cuddled him against her shoulder.

“The fuck?” Rache asked.

“I don’t know what she is doing exactly, or how far she has come. But I need to burn everything she has going on up there at the convent.”

“Jesus . . .” Eric swept his hands through his long greying hair. “What the fuck is wrong with these people? Ending the world once wasn’t enough?”

“I’m not giving them a chance to find out,” Else said. “I need enough flammable stuff to burn the convent down by morning.”

“I’m on it.” Eric started to walk away and then turned back. “There’s no one else out there doing this shit, is there? If we end this it stops, right? No more crazy fuckers trying to play God?”

“I don’t know,” Else said. “But if this is the end, then it starts now.”

* * *

Eric proved that he could make explosives or flammable gels out of almost anything. Five hours later he had six plastic bottles containing an oily looking sludge. Each top had a fuse protruding through a putty seal.

“It’s quite simple,” he said. “Light the fuse and get the fuck away from it. This stuff will stick to anything and it will keep burning. Water will just piss it off. If you get any on you, smother the burn.”

“Is this enough?” Else eyed the bottles.

“Try it and see.” Eric gave the grin that always made Else wonder about his sanity. “But make sure you are a long way away when it goes up. Do you have anything to light it with?” he added.

“I’ll find something. Take my baby to Cassie. Tell her to look after him and I will be back soon.”

Eric nodded and held the baby gingerly. He was wet and smelled like he’d taken a dump. “Burn, baby, burn,” Eric whispered. Giggling, he held the child at arm’s length and went to find Cassie.

Cassie took Else’s baby without a word. “Keep him safe. His mother’ll be back soon,” Eric told her. The idea of leaving Else’s son with anyone, even someone she trusted like Cassie, made him uneasy. “He needs cleaning,” he added, as if the smell wasn’t enough.

Leaving town and jogging along the edge of the road to the convent, Else could see the compound was running on solar power. The white stone of the high walls glowed in the aura of halogen lights powered by batteries. The fence at the end of the road might be an issue. If they had closed the gates by now, Else had a plan for that too.

There were no guards on the road that Else could see. The sentries were further out, beyond the fields, along the haphazard fence line that marked the border of civilization. From what she remembered of the convent, they had a lot of extra space. Donna had taken over the chapel, but there were other rooms, plenty of places for the geneticist to be keeping clones and other secrets.

The bottles of goo banged against her hips as she ran. A cord wrapped around the neck of each bottle held them in bandolier fashion. As she ran, Else wondered if the Courier could touch her mind at this distance. According to the road maps, they had been closest to Sydney, and his grave, when he came to her in the dream.

The darkness between the convent and the community of Mildura glowed with moonlight and the smear of the Milky Way. Else had spent weeks counting the stars, plotting each one in her head and noticing when they moved. Books on astronomy and constellations had given her a new context to place these mesmerizing spots of light against. Now she could navigate with ease, knowing the Southern Cross, the constellation shown on the Australian flag, and the twin stars called the Pointers. Using them as a reference she could orient herself and know which way to travel to get home. As long as the sky was clear.

An eerie noise reached her from the east. A vibrant, rumbling buzz. It was a tonal sound, low enough to make her body feel like it was quivering in harmonic response. At the same time the sound progressed up a scale, becoming a ghostly, birdlike cry.

Else turned east, the sound drawing her as surely as a marked path. Evols did not make music; they moaned and sometimes snarled. But now, they never used tools or had any remaining sentience. Her feet slapped on the hard ground as the light breeze whispered through the low foliage of the crops growing in the field. Maybe it was some rusting pipe that was catching the breeze?

A flickering light came into view as Else ran, a small campfire, silhouettes arrayed around it and the dirge-like moan of the music growing stronger as she approached.