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  Surviving the Evacuation

  No More News

  Life Goes On Book 2

  Frank Tayell

  Reading Order & Copyright

  Despair Solves Nothing

  Surviving the Evacuation: No More News

  Life Goes On, Book 2

  Published by Frank Tayell

  Copyright 2020

  All rights reserved

  All people, places, and (most) events are fictional.

  Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novels

  Strike a Match 1. Serious Crimes

  Strike a Match 2. Counterfeit Conspiracy

  Strike a Match 3. Endangered Nation

  Work. Rest. Repeat.

  Surviving The Evacuation / Here We Stand / Life Goes On

  Book 1: London

  Book 2: Wasteland

  Zombies vs The Living Dead

  Book 3: Family

  Book 4: Unsafe Haven

  Book 5: Reunion

  Book 6: Harvest

  Book 7: Home

  Here We Stand 1: Infected

  Here We Stand 2: Divided

  Book 8: Anglesey

  Book 9: Ireland

  Book 10: The Last Candidate

  Book 11: Search and Rescue

  Book 12: Britain’s End

  Book 13: Future’s Beginning

  Book 14: Mort Vivant

  Book 15: Where There’s Hope

  Life Goes On 1: Outback Outbreak

  Book 16: Unwanted Visitors, Unwelcome Guests

  Book 17: There We Stood

  Life Goes On 2: No More News

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  Synopsis

  Though the apocalypse has begun, the reckoning is still to come.

  When Pete Guinn went to Australia to find his missing sister, he left behind the woman he loved. In the city he once called home, panic and chaos arrive long before the living dead. As South Bend burns to the ground, Olivia flees, seeking safety in the remote woods of Michigan. But the backwoods are no safer than the outback, and nowhere is remote enough to escape the horrors of the living dead.

  With global communications systems fractured, Pete Guinn and his sister, Corrie, are a small part of a large effort to re-establish contact between the forces still fighting the undead. As they journey east across Canada, they instead find the frontline. An army is being formed out of Canadians and refugees from the United States, out of retirees, reservists, and conscripts. Night and day, a war is waged against an enemy that doesn’t tire or retreat, ask for quarter or offer it. But victory is in sight. The undead can be defeated. As long as the supply lines are maintained. As long as the ultimate sacrifice is selflessly made again and again. As long as the worst of the apocalypse is behind them. But though the apocalypse has begun, the reckoning is still to come.

  Set in Canada and the U.S. Midwest, continuing the story of the survivors in the Pacific, which began in Outback Outbreak, No More News is a story of love and war as the apocalypse tears our world apart.

  Table of Contents

  27th February

  The Apocalypse So Far

  Part 1: Hell Comes to South Bend

  20th February

  Chapter 1: The End of Dreams

  Chapter 2: Old Dates and Dead Friends

  Chapter 3: Impatient Inpatients

  21st February

  Chapter 4: A New Dawn, an Old Problem

  Chapter 5: Old Boss, No Boss

  Chapter 6: By Dawn’s Glaring Light

  Chapter 7: Breaking the Law

  Chapter 8: Trooper State

  22nd February

  Chapter 9: Win or Lose, You Can’t Beat a House

  23rd February

  Chapter 10: No One’s Special

  Part 2: A Crazy Thing Called Love

  27th February

  Chapter 11: Air-Drea

  Chapter 12: Who Cares About Anthrax?

  28th February

  Chapter 13: Shallow Thoughts

  Chapter 14: Lake Michigan

  Chapter 15: The Long Walk to Indiana

  Chapter 16: Bodies in the Woods

  1st March

  Chapter 17: Other People’s Expectations

  Chapter 18: U-Call, We Carry

  Chapter 19: One Dream at a Time

  Chapter 20: Escaping the Past

  Part 3: The War for Humanity

  2nd March

  Chapter 21: A Canadian Quarantine

  3rd March

  Chapter 22: A Change of Direction

  4th March

  Chapter 23: Apocalyptic Dating

  Chapter 24: The Destruction of Notre Dame (24th February)

  Chapter 25: Justice Delayed

  Chapter 26: Three Women, a Man, and Their Dog

  5th March

  Chapter 27: Evacuation

  Chapter 28: The War for Wawa

  Chapter 29: The Wages of Courage

  Chapter 30: Presidents and Prisoners

  Chapter 31: Determining a Just Cause

  6th March

  Chapter 32: Unhappy Endings

  Chapter 33: Last Dates

  7th March

  Chapter 34: Second Chances

  8th March

  Chapter 35: Unwanted Visitors

  Part 4: The World on Fire

  12th March

  Chapter 36: Prometheus

  Chapter 37: Revelation

  13th March

  Chapter 38: If Not Us, Then Who?

  Chapter 39: Beginnings and Endings

  Epilogue: Rule Five

  27th February

  The Apocalypse So Far

  Nanaimo Airport, British Columbia

  For the second time that morning, the hangar’s small office filled with the buzz of departing helicopters. Pete Guinn abandoned sleep and dragged himself out of the military-grade sleeping bag issued to him by the Canadian police officer.

  “Are they leaving?” Pete asked, crossing to the window where RCMP Constable Jerome MacDonald watched the choppers depart.

  “Heading to Vancouver,” Jerome said. “As we promised. How much do you know about the missing woman?”

  “Clemmie Higson? Not very much at all,” Pete said, watching the trio of helicopters dart upwards, then buzz towards the chaos that was Vancouver City. “Her mom’s the pilot who flew us here. We stayed in their house down in Australia, but I never met Clemmie. She’s been studying, here in Vancouver. Do you think they’ll find her?”

  “We’ll do everything we can,” Constable MacDonald said in a well-practiced, professional manner that was neither confirmation nor denial.

  Pete grabbed his coat, the only item of clothing he’d taken off, tied his boots, and refilled the pockets he’d emptied during the night. It was nine days since he’d left South Bend. Nine days, give or take a hemispheric time zone, since he’d bidden farewell to Olivia Preston in the parking lot of Wall-to-Wall Carpets where they’d both worked. He’d almost… not asked Olivia out on a date, but almost gone for a non-work drink, which, maybe, might have led to something. They’d hung out before, sure, in and out of work. They’d helped each other at the weekend with moving and other multi-person chores, but those were always shrouded in a veil of co-workerly neighbourliness. That last time had been different. Not just the moment out in the snow, but during the few days before when they’d been closing down and locking up the store. Except their stolen m
oment had been disturbed by a limo, waiting outside to take Pete to the airport.

  He couldn’t really remember anything about the limo because he’d been transfixed by the passenger, the billionaire Lisa Kempton. Technically she was his new employer. Or, since the apocalypse had changed everything, his last employer. Except he wasn’t sure she’d even been that. Kempton had bought the carpet store simply so she could promote him from a shop-floor gopher up to regional management where no one would think it suspicious for him to be sent to a training course in Hawaii. There had been no training course. Yes, they’d gone to Hawaii, but only to refuel, after which they’d continued soaring southward over the Pacific, to Australia.

  Nine days. Only nine days, and the world had changed completely.

  Beyond the window, snow lay in drifts along Nanaimo’s runway, pushed aside by the growing number of conscript-labourers bringing the Canadian airfield back to life. The workers had all come from the nearby town on the eastern edge of Vancouver Island, where some had lived and worked for years. Others were refugees from remote hamlets, while some were escapees from Vancouver City who’d fled across the tumultuous Strait of Georgia by ferry, freighter, yacht, and even dinghy. Now they hastily cleared the snow, preparing for the arrival of more flights, while others strengthened the fence, readying for the arrival of more zombies. Pete wondered which would arrive first.

  While the helicopters had gone to Vancouver City in search of Liu Higson’s daughter, Liu herself had flown the jet back to Australia, the cabin full of bed-bound children in desperate need of a working hospital. It was the same plane which had taken him to Australia nine days and a lifetime ago.

  He shivered with misremembered fondness at the shock of the heat as he’d stepped out of the jet plane onto Broken Hill’s baking runway.

  Lisa Kempton had sent him to Australia to make contact with his long-missing sister, Corrie. For years, Kempton had known about a group of corrupt politicians and aspirant gangsters plotting to destroy the world and rule over its ruins. She had, apparently, been working to stop them. To assist in that effort, she’d recruited Corrie Guinn, Pete’s sister. But Corrie, when she’d learned what Kempton was really doing, had fled. She’d gone off the grid, under the radar, and out of his life for a decade. But Kempton had finally found her, and she’d sent Pete to play messenger, to hand his sister a sat-phone and a number to call.

  Pete was still hazy on the nature of that call, or the code his sister had long ago written and then activated, except that it had something to do with satellites, nuclear weapons, and missile guidance systems. Ultimately it didn’t matter, because Kempton’s real purpose was sending away two of her once-trusted pilots, Rampton and Jackson, one of whom Kempton suspected of being an agent of the cartel. And that didn’t matter either, not really. Not after the outbreak. And certainly not after an airliner had crashed in the outback, outside Corrie’s remote cabin, with zombies aboard. He and his sister had fought the undead, and fought their way back to the cabin. They’d nearly died, but had been rescued by an airborne RSAS unit and been helicoptered back to Broken Hill where they’d been billeted with Liu Higson.

  Her husband, also a pilot, was missing somewhere in Europe. Her daughter, Clemmie, was studying in Vancouver, leaving Liu at home with her son, Bobby. Pete and Corrie had been given the small one-room annex to sleep in, Clemmie’s vacation-time home. For the briefest few hours, things had appeared nearly normal before the nightmare twisted its blade, becoming infinitely worse.

  It always got worse, he thought. Billionaires, then zombies, then gangsters, then gangsters armed with assault rifles and mortars. It always got worse. Baking heat then freezing snow. He should be optimistic. Olivia was always saying that you should be optimistic because despair solves nothing. It was a saying Olivia had copied from their old boss, Nora Mathers.

  Pete’s hand strayed to the holster at his belt, and the distinctly non-military gun held there. But things had gotten worse in Broken Hill. The cartel had come after them. In a diner, he and Liu had killed a gangster armed with the silenced pistol he now carried at his belt. Pete had found himself helping the police inspector, Tess Qwong, and so became witness to the infected undead arriving at Broken Hill’s outer limits. He and Corrie had helped where they could, in the town, at the airport, as refugees arrived, as zombies followed, as the world beyond collapsed. During the search for left-behind survivors, they’d stumbled across the cartel thugs’ hideout, and the tortured remains of the pilots, Rampton and Jackson. And then, barely, they had finally escaped Broken Hill by plane as mortar shells rained down on the runway.

  The plane had been supposed to fly to Canada, or at least to North America. Liu Higson had received approval of the plan from Canberra, and a promise that Australian SAS soldiers would be sent to travel with them. While Liu wanted to find her daughter, the real purpose of the flight was to learn what was happening in North America. Pete and Corrie were to be the guides, taking the Australian Special Forces east. But while they were waiting for the soldiers, shells had begun exploding around the plane. To save the aircraft, and to leave before the runway was ruined, Liu had decided to take off, with only Pete, Corrie, and Liu’s son, Bobby, as passengers. Flying on fumes, they’d landed at Nanaimo.

  At least they’d found people here. Survivors. Police officers. Refugees from the chaos consuming Vancouver. A deal had been struck. Liu would ferry sick children down to Australia where there were still hospitals. In return, the helicopters had gone to the city to find Liu’s daughter, while Pete and Corrie were being given a flight of their own, inland, to complete the mission with which the missing Australian Special Forces had been tasked: to learn what was happening in the United States. From what Pete had seen of Vancouver Island, it was bad. Worse than Australia.

  But he was returning to Indiana. He’d return to South Bend. He could look for Olivia. Which was… it was crazy. Beyond dumb-stupid. Sure, down in Australia, he’d dreamed of seeing her again, but he’d not really thought he’d be allowed on the flight north with the soldiers. Not really. In the air, he’d simply hoped they’d find somewhere to land. But the Canadians had asked where they were trying to reach, and now they would help them get to Indiana. It was… it was hard to put into words. Sure, there was one word that explained it all, a word used in songs and poems by Shakespeare and Frost, and every other poet whose name he didn’t know. It was a word he didn’t feel comfortable using. Not here. Not now. Not until he found her. But he knew he wouldn’t find Olivia. There was no chance he’d see her again.

  A grumbling rasp behind him punctuated his sister extracting herself from the sleeping bag she’d been cocooned inside.

  But he had found his sister. Impossibly. Improbably. The sister he’d not seen in years, who’d gone on the run to keep him out of the nightmare Kempton had dragged her into. Corrie might have failed in that, and Kempton had certainly failed to stop the apocalypse, but he and his sister were now, impossibly, together. So maybe there was a chance, no matter how slim, he’d find Olivia. Somehow. Somewhere. Out in the frozen wasteland of post-outbreak North America.

  Part 1

  Hell Comes to South Bend

  Indiana and Michigan

  20th February

  Chapter 1 - The End of Dreams

  South Bend, Indiana

  For Olivia Preston, the whoosh of water whirling through pipes an inch of plasterboard away from her ears was better than an alarm clock.

  “I’m up, I’m up,” she lied, automatically reaching for her phone, but it wasn’t there. Sleep faded, wakefulness returned, and with it came memory. Specifically the memory of her roommate, Nicole, confiscating her phone and quarantining it in the kitchen drawer last night. Not that Olivia needed to check the time. If Nicole was in the shower, she was getting ready for work, so it was on the tomorrow side of four a.m.

  Olivia, by contrast, had no job to get up for, but was enjoying the glorious unicorn of a paid vacation while the carpet store was being refurbished. With
nowhere to be, and nothing that had to be done, she could go back to sleep, but a routine is a hard habit to kick. She dragged herself out of bed, padded into the kitchen, and flicked on the coffee machine, waiting for Nicole to finish her shower.

  Theirs was a small apartment on the western bank of the St Joseph River. A two-bed, one-bath, with an open-plan living-room-kitchen on the fourth floor of a recent renovation on Waterside Drive. The apartments on the east-facing side of the block had river views. She and Nicole did not. By way of compensation, in the summer, with the windows open, they did have a river smell. But they didn’t pay rent. The building’s owner had wanted new carpet, and quickly, after a tenant had done a midnight flit taking the flooring from their unit. Olivia had laid it herself, for a discount, after hours, and with Mrs Nora Mathers’s help. Impressed, the landlord had asked whether they could re-floor some of the other units, which turned into a one-month day-and-night slog through the entire building, its neighbour, a set of suites near the university, and a block of offices near the airport. In return, Olivia had been given a small two-bedroom apartment, rent-free for a year. At the time, Nicole had been sleeping on her couch in a two-sofa walk-up little bigger than a lock-up, so it was the perfect deal at the perfect moment. But that year was nearly up.

  The bathroom door opened and Nicole came out, dressed for her daily grind at the grocery store. The two women shared a similar temperament, similar hobbies, and similar foibles, but they were utterly dissimilar in appearance. Where Nicole was a beanpole six-foot-three, Olivia had to stretch to reach five-four. Where Olivia was dark-haired, Nicole was a bottle-blonde. Where Nicole could eat all the junk food she could steal from work without adding an ounce, Olivia gained a pound every time she walked past a bakery, which was why she’d taken up running this year. After two months, her slow jog along Riverside Drive had turned into a quick jaunt the mile and a half to Keller Park, on the return leg of which she often didn’t stop at the bakery.