Life Goes On | Book 5 | No Turning Back [Surviving The Evacuation]
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.”