The Colony Read online

  The Grand Concourse contained two small herds of crazies. Raymond put the stand of his bike down and used his Steyr to take care of them.

  The escalator to the North Concourse was not working. He wondered if he could accelerate his motorbike up the escalator and get to the platform.

  He rode back out of the station to the park. There was a light fence like a pool fence separating the park from the tracks. He got off his motorbike and walked up the steep embankment.

  He took hold of the post and leaned back hard against the embankment. The pole moved in the ground and was now at a thirty-degree angle. He climbed the fence and leaned against the post with all his weight. The post came out of the ground and Ray, the post, the lump of concrete, and one of the fence sections rolled down the hill in a jumble.

  Ray stood up, amused, “Fuck me up the bum! That was fucked. Maybe this shit’s not worth it. I’ll stay the fuck in Surry Hills and keep hunting here.”

  He’d already decided that the risks were too high in the city, out in the country, things would be much easier.

  He went back to his bike and started it again. A swarm was coming his way, but he didn't care. He rode his BMW up the embankment and onto the tracks.

  He accelerated down the tracks and took the Town Hall and Wynyard tunnel. ‘Why is it signed?’ he thought, ‘Would the train drivers get confused and take the Museum tunnel by accident?’ He chuckled to himself at the stupid Government Bureaucracy.

  The rocks and concrete sleepers made for a rough surface but the smooth suspension and tires of his BMW R1200R handled the bumps. As he entered the tunnel, his lights automatically came on. The noise of the bike reverberating on the walls was a little disconcerting, but he was in a great mood. He was going hunting.

  - 30 -

  At 7:00 am, John Bottle, the head of security, began his briefing. They were meeting in the room where Linda and Kevin had had dinner the night before. The apes were visible through the glass.

  “There are outbreaks in Brisbane, Sydney, the Gold Coast, Canberra, Toowoomba, and Donaldson. So far, the zoo and the town are clear. The Prime Minister referred to the attackers as Plague Victims or PVs”, he began. “But the New South Wales Government has issued a level A2 evacuation order for this area.”

  A tourist from Japan raised her hand, stood when acknowledged. She took a small bow to John Bottle and asked, “Please Sir, can you explain what A2 evacuation means?”

  “Yes ma'am, I'll explain. An A1 evacuation order means the Police or Military will forcibly remove you from the area. A2 means they can only forcibly remove you if they think you are in immediate danger but they are requesting that the area be evacuated.”

  “The more important aspect of this is that they are asking people in the area to evacuate to Somerset where a camp is being set up to house everyone. The College there can accommodate thousands”, John Bottle concluded.

  There was a commotion outside. Kevin looked through the plate glass window and saw an old man wearing nothing but a t-shirt running at a young man and a woman who were preparing to feed the apes.

  He jumped at the woman who looked his way in utter surprise, she fell backward with the old man on top of her. His naked arse was in the air and he was biting at her throat. Kevin clearly saw a spurt of blood shoot out and spray all over her pretty blonde hair. 'She must dye it, no one could have hair that beautiful,' he thought.

  The young man who was with her was trying to yank the man off the woman. He succeeded in pulling the man off her and onto himself. The crazy man was biting into the sleeve of his jacket, trying very hard to get at flesh.

  This all happened in less than fifteen seconds. Most of the people in the room with Linda and Kevin reacted in fear, but five or six zoo workers including John Bottle ran out towards the trouble to help.

  Kevin felt his wife's hand tighten on his arm, “No you don't Kevin, you stay right here.”

  The injured woman's legs were twitching and she moved from side to side on her back as if being tickled by an invisible lover. She sat up, blood pouring down from her neck and dripping on her chest and the thighs of her previously blue jeans. She looked at her work partner struggling to control the first crazy man. She crawled over to her friend and bit him hard on the throat. Blood poured out of the wound into her mouth. He stopped struggling, he stopped fighting, he stopped living.

  The crazy old man and the young woman stood to meet John Bottle and his group.

  The young woman bit two men in the first ten seconds. She was fast, athletic, but they seemed reluctant to see her as a danger. They turned very fast and immediately attacked their friends, killing two of them and injuring John.

  The skirmish was over in under a minute. John Bottle himself was running away from the group with a shallow bite on his hand. Kevin heard him open the building door and enter the restaurant.

  “Lock the fucking door”, he was shouting as he entered the restaurant. Kevin and two other men locked the door and put two tables against it.

  The group in the restaurant looked at each other in shock. There were seventeen of them, including the injured man.

  Outside, they saw people running around for a couple of minutes or so, but after that, there was no one to be seen.

  “Okay, I've been bitten and feel like shit. We need the bus. It'll hold us all. We can get to my farm and hold up there until help comes.”

  As the adrenaline dissipated, he became calm, realising he was injured but not in much pain.

  “Maybe I’ll be lucky”, he said to Kevin who was standing close by.

  “Where's this bus?”, asked Linda.

  “It's close. I'll show you.”

  Kevin and Linda were led out through the restaurant kitchen, down a hallway to an office where John picked up the keys to the bus. They went to a doorway and looked out through the glass doors.

  “It's there. That white thirty-seater. Can you drive a manual car?”, he asked Kevin.

  Kevin nodded. John picked up the keys and pointed at the bus. Doop, Doop. The doors unlocked.

  Kevin took the keys in hand. Linda hesitantly opened the door and he sprinted around a set of cars and across the gravel driveway to the door of the bus. As he opened the door of the bus, he heard Linda close the door that he'd just come from.

  Kevin drove the bus to the door where Linda was waiting. By the time he had it positioned near the door, John had returned with the other people. Kevin opened the passenger door and sixteen people rushed into the bus. Kevin closed the door and started across the carpark.

  John ordered, “Go right at the carpark exit. We'll drive through the zoo to the staff exit. It's the most distant away from here.”

  They drove through the zoo, but didn't see anyone at all. Later, when Linda thought about it and thought about the news footage, she realised that the crazies would have formed a herd and were off together somewhere. It was just lucky that they didn’t see them.

  John directed Kevin to the exit. He handed Kevin his magnetic gate key, Kevin leaned out the window and swiped the electronic switch, the gates opened and they were out on the town streets.

  Linda looked around at the group. There were no zoo staff, other than John. Just a bunch of holidaying city dwellers, getting a country experience, just like Kevin and herself.

  They were at John's farm fifteen minutes later. It was on a hill above the main road.

  As they drove, a panic was rising in Kevin's heart. At least his daughter was safe in Amsterdam, or so he thought.

  - 31 -

  Everyone was busy for the first few hours at John's farm. The farm had two houses. One of them was called “The New House.” It was brick and built by John's father in 1986. “The Old House” was the original farmhouse from the 1920s.

  Although it was normally rented out to Zoo employees, the Old House happened to be vacant when the plague struck.

  Once everyone was settled in, Kevin took the opportunity to call his daughter. Her phone appeared to be switched off. />
  - 32 -

  It was a long day. Jillian called James, over and over again and became more concerned each time she got his voice mail. Faye and John-Paul sat in the lounge room, Faye was still weeping but John-Paul was too shocked to be displaying any reactions.

  “Your Father is not answering his phone”, their mother said. “I want to go to find him.”

  “He’s dead mum”, said Faye. “Otherwise he’d answer or call.”

  “Or he’s crazy”, said John-Paul.

  Jillian looked at her children. John-Paul was staring into the carpet but Faye looked at her mother with tears running down her face.

  “We are going to find your father, one way or the other. Go and get in the car, right now.”

  - 33 -

  They reversed out of the garage and onto the street, thirty minutes later they reached the outskirts of the Zoo and drove to the main gates. The gates were closed.

  They drove back onto the main road and around to the back of the Zoo and found the staff entrance, they used their father’s swipe card, he had one in each of the family’s cars, and entered the zoo grounds. They did the reverse of the trip that John Bottle had done a few hours earlier and drove to the visitor’s centre.

  “Mum, there’s a man over there. Dead I think”, said Faye. “No honey, that’s not him, your father is in the light blue uniform, the green ones are for the animal feeders.”

  They drove around for a few minutes and at the far end of the Zoo, down behind the Primate enclosure they found the swarm and the swarm found them.

  - 34 -

  Jillian stopped the car and the swarm started running towards them, her husband was the swarm leader and was sprinting towards their car.

  “Mum, Move the fucking car, Mum hurry!”, said Faye. Jillian snapped the car into reverse and accelerated backwards. She was facing the rear of the car and didn’t see the look of pure hatred on her husband’s face. Faye saw, and it haunted her dreams for the rest of her life. The car swung around the corner and was facing ninety degrees to the crazies.

  Faye looked out of her side window and screamed, her father was less than fifteen meters away. Jillian popped the car into first and dropped the clutch. The car’s eight-cylinder engine roared and the tyres spun thrusting the car away from the crazies but now in the forward direction. As the thing that was previously Faye’s father reached the rear of the car, he lunged and dived but missed, landing face first on the road. Oblivious to the pain, the creature was up and sprinting after them. Jillian accelerated down the main zoo road towards the staff entrance. She stopped at the entrance to use the swipe card, this required that she open the window.

  “Mum, hurry, hurry, they’re coming”, yelled John Paul.

  She swiped the card and the gate slid open, it seemed to take forever for the steel gate to roll aside.

  “Mum!!!!”, the kids screamed

  Hands banged on the back of the car as she accelerated off, John-Paul and Faye looked out the rear window and saw the face of their father glaring back at them. Blood and gravel were on his forehead. The group of crazies led by their father ran out of the Zoo gates up the street after the car. The powerful V8 engine accelerated them away, back towards their home in Gilford.

  - 35 -

  That night Faye went to bed early but her mother and brother stayed up late watching the news. It was a horror story.

  The Government was advising everyone to remain in their homes, to wait for the initial crisis to be over. When they heard Faye’s breathing deepen in the room next to the lounge Jillian got up and closed the bedroom door.

  “What happened at the school this morning Mum?”, John-Paul asked her as she sat back down.

  “The principal was sending all the kids home, as they arrived their parents were asked to take them back home. The secretaries were working the phones, they’d been ringing people since 7:00am so not very many turned up.”

  She stopped talking for a moment.

  “I wonder why they didn’t call us teachers not to come in”, she thought out-loud.

  “Well they didn’t call the high school kids remember mum, most people were there.”

  “Yes, it must have been Tony’s idea I guess. Anyhow we were all gathered outside when one of the mothers turned up. She had a bandage on her forearm, I remember thinking it was weird. It was fluro pink, really bright like a safety bandage or something. She had two of her kids with her, one was missing. She’s in my class but wasn’t with her.”

  “So, I said, ‘Oh hello Mrs Carmody, how is Sue?’ and then it happened.”

  “The fury John-Paul. The fury. I will never forget it.”

  Jillian began to cry. “She put one hand on the head of each of her children and smashed them together. She smashed in the heads of her own children, the strength it must take to do that.”

  Jillian completely broke down and began to sob.

  “They collapsed on the ground, dead I think. Then she attacked the Principal. There were six or seven of us teachers there and we scattered, most of us ran to the car park but some went inside the school. I just got in my car and came to get the two of you. I sort of feel guilty like I should have tried to help at the school, but I know I did the right thing coming to get you both.”

  John-Paul said nothing. He thought about what his mother said and then about what he saw at the high school. Then he recalled the face of his father.

  “I’m glad you came for us mum, otherwise I think we’d all be dead.”

  They sat there in silence for the next fifteen minutes or so until John-Paul went for a shower and then to bed. Jillian double checked the house was locked up securely and then brushed her teeth and went to bed.

  - 36 -

  Faye awoke with a start. Her father had found his way home and was banging on her bedroom window. She looked but there was no-one there. It was just a dream but the residual fright had given her the shakes.

  She got out of bed and opened the door. The kitchen light was on but no-one was up. She went to the open door of her parent’s room and saw her mother was asleep.

  She hadn’t slept in her parent’s bed since she’d stopped having nightmares in primary school but she was scared now, and needed comfort. It occurred to her that her mother was sleeping with the light on so maybe she was scared too. She walked to the side of the bed that her father had gotten out of early the previous day and slipped under the covers and cuddled up to her mother, her mother always a light sleeper rolled towards her and cuddled her back.

  Jillian was smiling in her sleep, perhaps dreaming that her husband was home or perhaps knowing that she was giving comfort to her daughter who needed it so much.

  - 37 -

  Police Sergeant Bevan Ronald was feeling useless. After a very eventful morning and three hours being grilled by the Assistant Commissioner, he wondered if sitting on a roadblock on the south-western outskirts was a punishment for killing Louise. The boss had told him to take the armoured Hawkei; but so far, its muscle hadn't been necessary.

  The job was simple.

  Most people were following the request by the PM and were staying home. In high plague victim areas, the military were evacuating bite free people. So, he wasn't stopping many people. Travel wasn't restricted, but anyone who didn't have a specific destination was being strongly advised to go home.

  The current mob had a definite destination. The guy driving the truck at the front of the group claimed to own a Winery up next to Rhodes National Park in the Granite Belt.

  “Sir, can I please get your name and destination? Travel is not officially restricted but we would like to keep track of things.”

  “Yes, that makes sense to me. I'm Grady Boch and we're heading to Rhodes. I have a Winery on the Colossus Road. I have a print out of the rest of the names and our home addresses if that makes it easier for you.

  As Boch drove off, Bevan wished them well. It occurred to Bevan that he was wrong about feeling useless. He hadn't killed anyone this afternoon and bo
redom is a small price to pay for that.

  - 38 -

  The information that the cop had shared was interesting, thought Grady.

  The current theory was that the crazies had some sort of infection or virus. Perhaps something like rabies. It had been happening too fast to get any clear answers.

  Australia didn’t have rabies at that time, so it couldn't be a mutation of that unless it had arrived with someone on a plane.

  The infection seemed to move in two ways. The people who had deep fleshy bites with bleeding and flesh torn seem to go crazy from the plague very fast. Victims of light bites get sick, a fever and go crazy over a two to four-hour period.