Life Goes On | Book 5 | No Turning Back [Surviving The Evacuation] Read online

  Life Goes On 5:

  No Turning Back

  Frank Tayell

  Reading Order & Copyright

  The world is full of big people who have big adventures and little people lucky enough to lead little lives. But beware when the little people tire of being dragged into the big people’s war.

  Surviving the Evacuation: No Turning Back

  Life Goes On, Book 5

  Published by Frank Tayell

  Copyright 2021

  All rights reserved

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

  Post-Apocalyptic Detective Novels

  Work. Rest. Repeat.

  Strike a Match 1. Serious Crimes

  Strike a Match 2. Counterfeit Conspiracy

  Strike a Match 3. Endangered Nation

  Strike a Match 4. Over By Christmas

  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

  Book 16: Unwanted Visitors, Unwelcome Guests

  Life Goes On 1: Outback Outbreak

  Life Goes On 2: No More News

  Life Goes On 3: While the Lights Are On

  Life Goes On 4: If Not Us

  Life Goes On 5: No Turning Back

  Book 17: There We Stood

  Book 18: Rebuilt in a Day

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  Synopsis

  Time is running out, but humanity can still be saved.

  Following a clue found in the logbook of a sinking ship, Commissioner Qwong and her crew search Mexico for a community still selling oil, but in a world where food is treasure, pirates will kill for a meal. As they follow garbled radio messages and breadcrumb-clues northward from one small band of survivors to another, a picture of the new world emerges.

  They find a city-settlement still operating a nine-to-five, walled compounds of children, roaming units of military cadets, individuals escaping the radiation, and families hunting missing relatives. They all have one thing in common, everyone is looking for safety, but it is soon apparent it won’t be found in the northern hemisphere. Sinking cities and rising swamps, fallout-laden farmland and fire ravaged homes, pirate-ridden coasts and zombie-filled shores: the damage is irreversible, and the rescue mission soon becomes an ecological survey, charting the spread of fallout, the location of inland craters, the growth of oceanic dead-zones, and the extent of coastal flooding.

  Despite the increasingly bleak discoveries, a new plan emerges, a blueprint for a new haven and a new way of living, a new future for the last survivors of humanity. One last chance, a desperate gamble which will take them to where the outbreak began, and then beyond.

  From the Caribbean to the Great Lakes, the full extent of the apocalypse becomes clear as the battle for humanity ends, and the fight for a new future begins.

  Table of Contents

  The Story So Far

  Prologue - Final Justice

  Part 1 - Honeymoon

  8th April

  Chapter 1 - Honeymoon Activities

  9th April

  Chapter 2 - Penguins and Turtles

  10th April

  Chapter 3 - Gold-Standard Shipping

  Chapter 4 - Flame-Seared City

  Chapter 5 - Superviventes

  11th April

  Chapter 6 - The Better Angels

  Chapter 7 - The Land Jaguars Once Ruled

  12th April

  Chapter 8 - Lookout for Land

  Chapter 9 - Paint It Blue

  Chapter 10 - Thick-Skinned Locals

  Chapter 11 - All Aboard

  13th April

  Chapter 12 - Four Days

  14th April

  Chapter 13 - No C, No E

  Part 2 - New York, New York, So Good They Destroyed It Twice

  15th April

  Chapter 14 - The Harbour Sea

  Chapter 15 - Where Nightmares Come True

  Chapter 16 - Where It Began

  Chapter 17 - A Bark in the Daytime

  Chapter 18 - The Best Safety Money Can Buy

  Chapter 19 - Fighting Retreat

  Chapter 20 - Too Late to Turn Back

  16th April

  Chapter 21 - Dressed for Shopping

  Chapter 22 - The Terminal Market

  Chapter 23 - Burning Pitchforks

  Chapter 24 - Archangel

  Chapter 25 - Ambush

  Chapter 26 - Do Zombies Dream of Infected Sheep?

  Chapter 27 - Movie Endings

  17th April

  Chapter 28 - The Leader’s Choice

  18th April

  Chapter 29 - Rising Danger

  Chapter 30 - The Withered Garden

  Chapter 31 - Strange Meetings on Stranger Roads

  Chapter 32 - Captured on Camera

  Part 3 - Jam Today, a Future Tomorrow

  19th April

  Chapter 33 - The Billionaire Biker Gang

  Chapter 34 - Jam Today

  20th April

  Chapter 35 - Semi Wrecked

  Chapter 36 - Babes in the Woods

  21st April

  Chapter 37 - Gridlock

  Chapter 38 - Springtime Traps

  Chapter 39 - Flying Underground

  Chapter 40 - To Kill, or Not to Kill, That is the Question

  Part 4 - Where We’re Supposed to Be

  22nd April

  Chapter 41 - An Unexpected Invitation

  Chapter 42 - Burning Desire

  Chapter 43 - Open Air Baths

  23rd April

  Chapter 44 - When the Levee Broke

  Chapter 45 - Runaway

  24th April

  Chapter 46 - Tacking Stock

  Chapter 47 - The Trash House

  25th April

  Chapter 48 - Mind Your Head

  26th April

  Chapter 49 - Passing Sorrows

  27th April

  Chapter 50 - Twisted Weather

  Chapter 51 - The Place From Which No One Returns

  Chapter 52 - Change of Plans

  28th April

  Chapter 53 - A Busy Harbour

  Chapter 54 - The Voyage of the Voyager

  29th April

  Chapter 55 - Waiting on the Weather

  Chapter 56 - Chicken-Wire for the Soul

  Chapter 57 - Storm Cloud

  Epilogue - An Absolute Good

  8th April

  The Story So Far

  The Diaz Gallegos, The Caribbean Sea

  In the galley of the Chilean icebreaker, the Wenceslao Diaz Gallegos, a young Australian by birth and an older Australian by assumed identity sorted through supplies salvaged from the cartel killers on Corn Island.

  “Are you any good at cooking?” Zach asked.


  “I can manage beans, eggs, and snake,” Corrie said, picking up a can of tinned mangoes. She placed it on the counter.

  “Snake? Oh, yeah, I forgot you used to live in the bush,” Zach said. “That was in Commissioner Qwong’s patch, wasn’t it?”

  “It was a few hundred kilometres from Broken Hill,” Corrie said, “but Inspector Qwong, as she was in those days, kept an eye on me while I kept an eye on the dingo fence. On the whole, it wasn’t a bad life. Not one I’d have chosen, but one which ended up suiting me.”

  Zach opened, then immediately closed, the door to the walk-in pantry. “Smells like something died in there.”

  “Zombie?” Corrie asked.

  “It can’t be,” Zach said.

  Corrie grabbed the broom, and pushed the door open. “Clear,” she said. “What a waste. All that food, left to rot. It’ll need a scrub before we can put anything on the shelves. Let’s work out a menu for dinner first. Those large cans of papaya and two cans of mangoes can be dessert, so we just need an entree.”

  “Can we skip the starter and just have a main course?” Zach asked. “And I don’t think four cans will be enough. We’ve got ten Kiwi sailors plus Captain Renton running the ship. There’s Commish Qwong who’s actually in charge, Colonel Hawker, Nicko, Clyde, and me. Doc Flo and Doc Leo, you, your brother, and…”

  “And my sister-in-law,” Corrie said, smiling, as she picked up another can. “I guess things did work out okay in the end for Pete and Olivia. Yeah, add another can of mangoes to dessert. Does cebollas mean onions?”

  “Dunno. What language is that?”

  “Spanish, I reckon,” Corrie said. “My languages are rusty. I haven’t spoken much except for English and ’roo since I moved Down Under.”

  “The cartel didn’t speak Spanish to you while you were a prisoner?” Zach asked.

  “They barely spoke to us at all,” Corrie said. “Except for Mikael, and he preferred trying to teach me Russian. Ah, this one contains tomate. I can guess what that is. Look for a few more of these. Now, if the labels were in Python, C, or binary, I’d have no problem telling you what they said.”

  “That’s right, you’re a programmer, aren’t you?” Zach asked. “How come you ended up living out in the bush?”

  “I was on the run,” Corrie said. “Hiding from the cartel, and from Lisa Kempton.”

  “I thought Kempton was on our side,” Zach said.

  “It’s complicated,” Corrie said. “She’s complicated. But when I was about your age, I was a hacker. A coder, too, but hacking was a lot of fun. So much fun, I didn’t pay enough attention to the people watching out for people like me. I was caught hacking into NORAD, but a guy called Tom Clemens pulled me out of trouble. He was a political fixer, and he got me the job with Lisa Kempton so I could spy on her for him.”

  “That bloke was working for the cartel?” Zach asked.

  “No, he was working against them, and he still was when the outbreak happened. He didn’t trust Lisa, because, to stop them, she had to get close to her enemy. The cartel had to think she was on their side. Like I said, it’s complicated. Anyway, when I learned what was really going on, that there was a cabal of politicians aiming to kick-start a new feudal empire with the help of an international killer-cartel, I bailed.”

  “You ran away?”

  “To keep Pete safe,” Corrie said. “As long as the cartel couldn’t find me, they wouldn’t bother abducting Pete for leverage.”

  “Why? What did you know?” Zach asked.

  “Everything, I guess,” Corrie said.

  It was a truthful answer, but necessarily vague. A long time ago, a bug had been introduced into the various global positioning satellite systems used by the nuclear powers. Corrie had created the bug, and a patch to fix it. The patch also contained a hidden routine which, once initiated, would retarget any ICBM that pinged the satellite for a location-confirmation, sending the missile to the most isolated spot in the nearest ocean. After which, the satellite would be irretrievably bricked.

  When Lisa had pitched the idea, Corrie had seen it as a puzzle. It was only afterwards she’d realised it was terrorism. Lisa herself had clearly seen the folly in the idea as she’d invested vast sums into in-orbit docking, and just prior to the outbreak, she’d built and launched three repair and refuelling satellites. While Corrie had been long out of contact with Lisa by then, it was obvious to her that Lisa’s real goal was to erase any trace of that code. But, being Lisa, there was a secondary purpose: to create her own satellite network which would outlast any apocalypse.

  “I found the soap,” Zach said, opening a cupboard. “And some rags. Oh, it’s an apron.”

  “That’ll do,” Corrie said. “And that box’ll do for the trash.”

  “We’ll need more than one box,” Zach said as he re-opened the walk-in pantry. “So when you say you knew everything, you mean about the cartel, the zoms, and the nuclear war?”

  “Not the zombies, no,” Corrie said. “Lisa Kempton had been fighting this group of politicians, and the cartel, for years. The politicians used the cartel as muscle to bribe, blackmail, and murder their way to power. The cartel hoped to win legal immunity and legitimacy. But each time Lisa foiled a scheme, or defeated a politician, their plans became more desperate, more extreme, until they were plotting a nuclear war. Because they were getting desperate, Lisa thought she’d won.”

  “Guess she was wrong,” Zach said. “But I get why you’d run away from all of that. How did she find you? She did, didn’t she? Isn’t that how your brother ended up down in Oz?”

  “A few months ago,” Corrie said, “Lisa learned the cartel had an agent in her inner circle. Before Lisa made her final move, she needed to remove that spy. She suspected it was one of her pilots. So she sent both of them, and her plane, to Australia. As a pretext, she sent Pete with them, with a message for me, one of Lisa’s old employees. To avoid arousing suspicion, Lisa first bought the carpet company Pete and Olivia worked for. He thought he was going to a training seminar in Hawaii.”

  “That’s how she avoided suspicion, by buying an entire company?” Zach said. “Strewth, to be a billionaire.”

  “It’s how she thinks,” Corrie said. “And I guess it’s because she thinks like that, she grew rich enough to snap up entire companies on a whim.”

  “Well, your brother was lucky he didn’t get sent to Hawaii. The islands were swamped.”

  “Yep, he ended up in Australia,” Corrie said. “While the pilots waited in Broken Hill, Pete came to the outback. He had a message from Lisa, that I should call her. And I did. She knew the cartel was about to try something, demonstrate something, and that it would take place in New York.”

  “You mean the zombies?” Zach asked.

  “Maybe,” Corrie said. “Lisa didn’t have any details about the demonstration, but I can’t imagine it was anything else. Not when the first outbreak occurred in Manhattan a few hours later. No, Lisa didn’t know it was going to be zombies. I can’t believe the cartel did, either, or the politicians. Maybe I’m wrong.”

  “And like they say, the rest is the end of history,” Zach said, sweeping the rotting contents of a shelf into the box. “Yeah, we’ll need more boxes. That’s how you met the commish?”

  “Yep. Me and Pete were conscripted when we got back to Broken Hill. We helped Tess, and we helped Mick Dodson at the airport. But the cartel had sent a few of their people there to kill the pilots. After the outbreak, those killers wanted the plane so they could escape. They attacked the airport. There was an Australian pilot there, a friend of Tess’s called Liu Higson. Her daughter was in Vancouver. With the satellites down, there was no contact with anyone, anywhere. Canberra was sending some soldiers to Broken Hill to use that plane to fly to the very north to make contact with the government. When the cartel attacked the runway, and worried the plane would be damaged, Liu took off, with me and Pete, and her son, aboard. Liu took us to Vancouver, where we found some survivors organising an
evacuation of the city. While Liu went looking for her daughter, me and Pete went east.”

  “Looking for Olivia, right?” Zach asked.

  “Kinda, yeah. But also trying to find out more about what had happened across North America. I don’t think even Pete really expected he’d find Olivia. But we did, though we found Dr Avalon and Dr Smilovitz first, at a small airfield called Pine Dock on Lake Winnipeg. They went west. We went south, across Lake Michigan, through the State of Michigan, and to Indiana and South Bend. And we did find Olivia, and her dog, Rufus, and some kids she’d kept alive.”

  “What happened to the dog?” Zach asked.

  “Lisa has him now,” Corrie said. “We raced back through Michigan, and escaped via a boat plane, and ended up in Thunder Bay.”

  “Good name,” Zach said approvingly. “Where’s that?”

  “On the western shores of Lake Superior, and on the Canadian side of the border. That’s where Pete, Olivia, and I, and Rufus, joined General Yoon’s army, working for Judge Benton. She was the civilian authority. Those were good times.”

  “Compared with what happened next, you mean?” Zach asked.

  “No, compared to any,” Corrie said. “Growing up was tough for both of us, though worse for Pete, I guess, since he’s younger. When I escaped, I left him behind. The years since, even when I was safe in the outback, I was always terrified of being discovered, and felt guilty about abandoning Pete. But in Canada, with Pete and Olivia, there were a few brief days of family happiness when we thought the world might be saved. But then came the bombs. We were sure General Yoon and her army were wiped out. Judge Benton hoped to unite the survivors and lead them north. We were sent west to Vancouver, to make contact with the Pacific.”

  “That’s when the cartel caught you?”

  “Yep. Though first we found Lisa Kempton.”

  “Small world,” Zach said.

  “Except it wasn’t,” Corrie said. “Years ago, Lisa set up post-apocalyptic stash houses. Some were rendezvous points where her people could be picked up. Others were places with food, weapons, and strong walls from which local survivors of a nuclear war could be organised. This place in Canada was a bit different. It was a radio telescope she was building on the off-chance that this mission of hers was almost over. She wanted to create a different kind of legacy. But we went there hoping to find supplies to help us on our journey west. Instead we found she was being held prisoner by the cartel as they waited on their bosses to arrive.”