The South Forsaken

Chapter Two

Chapter TwoSarah pulled in at the petrol station down the road, filling up the tank just in case. A squeal of tyres jerked her attention to the front of the car. The crowded sedan in front of her peeled off and swerved along the road, away from the city.

She fumbled a little as she swiped her card at the counter, eyeing the panicked actions of the motorists as they sped past the petrol pumps. More than one took advantage of the panic to avoid paying.

Nell sat wide-eyed in the passenger seat, a pale spooked look fixed on her face. She hadn’t said a word since climbing into the car, her stillness in direct contrast to her usual hyperactivity. Sarah remained silent as she climbed back into the driver’s seat and sped down the crowded road toward her parents’ house.

Sarah’s brakes protested the sharp, jerking stop in front of the high iron bars that separated the house from the street. She left her car parked parallel to the house and almost ran through the tall gates, her father’s sporty coupe the only car in the driveway. Remembering Nell, Sarah turned to see a shaky figure climb out of the car, although she was unsure whether the shaking was a result of the situation they’d found themselves in, or of the fact that a normally twenty-minute drive had been compressed into ten. She hauled the gates shut behind Nell, fighting against years of disuse to bring them together. The faint squeak of the aged front door announced her mother’s arrival.

‘Sarah?’ Anica was a short woman with sparse greys starting to pepper her short dark hair. She walked slowly out onto the porch and stood with a quizzical look on her face.

‘Mum.’ Sarah sighed in relief, wanting to laugh at the normalcy of it all. She wanted to laugh off her hyperactive imagination, drive Nell home, then have a coffee with her Mum and listen to her Dad regale her with another debate on AFL vs NRL, trying to sway her decision to rebel against his years of training by choosing the former. The intermittent screech of tyres along nearby Anakie Road suggested otherwise, and she turned to watch the unusually heavy and dangerously fast traffic pouring up the road, eager to put the city behind them. Giving herself a sharp mental shake, Sarah ran to the converted garage behind the house and grabbed the bike chain from behind the door. She hurried to secure it around the gate, locking the group inside the relatively safe, though hopefully temporary shelter afforded to them. Nell had joined Sarah’s mother on the porch by this time and had actually hidden behind the bemused Anica, as though that alone would protect her. Sarah shook her head as she walked up the stairs to join them.

‘So …’ she began. ‘We had a bit of an eventful day at work. Could you put the kettle on, Mum?’

The idea of coffee seemed to spur Anica into action and she quickly moved into hostess mode, herding Sarah and Nell indoors and onto the couch. Within five minutes, they all held a coffee and Nell had a plate of biscuits in front of her, for ‘the shock’. Anica had thoroughly berated Sarah for her traumatising driving.

Sarah leaned back into her chair. ‘Dad, can you call Georgie please?’ she asked, turning to where her father sat in his customary recliner, his solid presence seeming to add some calmness to the room. Alex was the quiet type, a pastor and a counsellor for most of his life. His quiet studiousness seemed to directly contrast with Anica’s loud, at times brash personality. Her mother was currently displaying her restlessness through a constant stream of questions, as she tried to understand what was happening. Alex picked up his phone and dialled, putting it on speaker.

The phone rang several times before Georgia answered, and her strained voice spoke volumes about the stress she felt. Georgia lived with her fiancé, both serving in the military, on the Adelaide air force base, and her slightly acerbic personality usually kept this sort of emotion well hidden. The fact that she was now displaying her anxiety so openly suggested to Sarah that whatever was going on was big enough to involve the defence force.

‘Thank God you’re okay!’ Georgia blurted out. ‘We’re not allowed to call out. They’re watching us too closely and I couldn’t reach my phone without being obvious. I had to make an excuse to leave the room. I was so scared when I hadn’t heard anything from you. Are James and Rebecca okay? Are they with you? Are you all safe?’ The questions would have continued but Sarah jumped in when Georgia paused for a much-needed breath.

‘Georgie, slow down.’ Sarah surprised herself with how calm she sounded. ‘I’m here with Mum and Dad. James and Rebecca are on their way here with Charlie.’ As if summoned by the statement, a furious horn sounded at the gate. Anica walked over to the window.

‘They’re here,’ she said unnecessarily, and walked toward the door

‘I’ll get it,’ Sarah said quickly. ‘I put the bike lock on.’

Anica stared at her blankly. ‘Why is the bike lock on?’ she asked incredulously. ‘The gates are way too heavy to steal.’

Sarah ignored her mother’s attempt at humour and walked outside, leaving her parents to talk with their absent daughter.

James and Rebecca had parked outside the gates and were taking Charlie out of her car seat. Sarah could see their frightened expressions and quickly moved to undo the lock.

‘Going by the traffic out there, I think I’ve missed a good “I told you so” opportunity.’ James’s voice had a forced lightness to it that belied his pale face.

She did a double take as she saw their outfits. Rebecca’s wasn’t a surprise, dressed as she usually was in a skirt and heels. Sarah could understand that, to a point, there was no proof that this was anything more than a panicked request to visit. Why dress for the end of the world if you’re just visiting the in-laws? The sceptical part of Sarah’s brain scoffed at that before she turned on her brother.

‘Seriously? You’re potentially running for what may well be your life in what is hypothetically the zombie apocalypse, and you thought that was the shirt to do it in?’

James looked down at his artistically styled blood spattered shirt with ‘This is my zombie killing shirt’ emblazoned across the front.

‘Seemed fitting.’ He shrugged.

Sarah c****d an eyebrow, hoping her expression read, I’m so disappointed in your facetious behaviour, and that it didn’t betray the internal laughter she was trying to quash.

Sarah led the family inside, where Alex was speaking softly over the phone with Georgia, his face drawn. Anica was making coffee in the kitchen, with Nell hovering behind her trying to help, but in reality causing more of a hindrance. Secretly Sarah approved, thinking that Nell’s flightiness might give Anica something to focus on. She joined Alex, James and Rebecca in the lounge room, throwing a ‘hello’ toward the phone to announce her presence to Georgia, hoping to prompt her into giving the cliff notes of the conversation. It seemed to be related to their current situation, if Alex’s expression was anything to go by.

Georgia’s voice was uncharacteristically serious when it filled the room. ‘Hey Sarah, how are you?’

‘Oh, you know, recovering from Christmas, the usual,’ she shot back, voice oozing sarcasm in response to the inane question.

Georgia snorted inelegantly before filling the silence. ‘I gather you know something about what’s going on down there?’ she asked, taking a steadying breath.

‘Not really,’ Sarah admitted. Even with what she had seen, she wouldn’t commit to the idea until someone else seconded it. Please God, let me be over-reacting! she silently pleaded. Perhaps it was just an exacerbated viral disease as the memo had said. Jen might have been wrong; they had been hard-core horror fans for years, they had plans in place for the zombie apocalypse, and they certainly had enough material to whip their overactive imaginations into seeing what wasn’t there.

‘It’s happening,’ Georgia stated directly, bludgeoning that feeling of hope to a mushy pulp.

‘Bugger. Yeah, I figured.’ Sarah closed her eyes.

‘I have to go, there should be an emergency broadcast released soon. They held it off as long as they could in case the locals were able to contain it.’ Georgia sounded tired. ‘We’re not supposed to release information to the public outside of the official information. They’re worried about the panic it could cause. I told Dad what I know. I’ll meet you where we said we’d meet.’ She carefully side-stepped around using any names, not wanting to take the chance, as slim as it was, that someone would overhear her. There was silence; no one knew how to end the conversation.

‘Stay safe,’ Sarah said quietly, leaving the rest unsaid, partly because they weren’t overly demonstrative as a family, partly because it felt too much like goodbye.

She shook off her low mood, wanting to know what Alex had been told. The tension in the room was suffocating as everyone sat nursing what remained of their cold coffees.

Alex straightened in his seat, drawing the attention to himself. ‘As far as I can tell, there seem to be two stories. The first is the official story that is being given to the hospitals. There is a new strain of an unnamed virus that causes uncontrollable violent actions, and staff need to take precautions. Georgia says the unofficial story is that the viral lab is here in Geelong.’ He paused, noticing confusion on all their faces. ‘You must have heard about it. It was in the news while they were building it. They built a super lab to conduct research into every serious virus known to man here, right in Geelong.’ He went back to the story, not wanting to go too far off the track. ‘Apparently, one of the long-term research teams was using the Borna virus to test a new schizophrenia drug, mutating the virus with a few different strains, such as toxoplasmosis, to duplicate the disorder in order to trial their new treatment …’ He trailed off, waving a hand vaguely. ‘Georgia doesn’t have specifics—the whole thing was highly experimental. She only heard that somehow, one of the mutated strains was released. There’s a rumour that one of the lab techs was infected, but nobody noticed until it was too late. There is someone the military is looking into as a possible source. One of the lab techs admitted his son into ED, after the boy attacked his mother.’

Sarah nodded, thinking back to what she had seen at the hospital. She frowned. ‘Did she say what happened to the lab tech?’ she asked.

Alex shook his head. ‘The last she heard, he had been restrained due to schizophrenic ideations and manic behaviour. He was threatening to kill his son.’

‘So, what now?’ Rebecca asked, holding Charlie tightly.

Sarah’s mind flashed to the countless hours of zombie movies she had watched, laughing at the hapless victims as they aimlessly flung themselves headfirst into hordes of predators. Suddenly the humour seemed a lot more distant, her half-formed plans seemingly irrelevant when facing the stark reality of it all. Everything she knew about zombies agreed on two things: first, they started overseas, not some small, secondary city in Australia. The second and the more immediately relevant point was that they needed to leave.

Alex numbly reached for the remote control and turned on the television. The blonde anchorwoman looked annoyed as she read from the statement in front of her, glancing up and to the side of the camera every now and then as if looking for confirmation, a hint that this might be a prank. The red chaser streamed across the bottom of the screen warning viewers in Geelong to stay off the roads and remain in their houses where possible, or find their nearest refugee centre if they found themselves away from home, or in the city.

‘People are advised to keep phone lines clear. Officials are aware of what is happening and, with call centre staff reduced and the huge influx of calls, they are unable to keep up with the demand. The army is being called in and will be setting up roadblocks throughout regional Victoria in an attempt to contain this infection … Really?’ She looked to the side again. ‘Tezz, this is ridiculous. Is this a joke?’ Someone must have motioned the woman to go on, as she picked up the paper once more, her face tight with frustration. ‘I repeat. There is a highly infectious virus that has struck residents in Geelong. Victims are showing extreme rage and violent tendencies. There have been reports of the infected attacking others, and fatalities have been reported, though numbers are not known at this point. Towns around the affected area have been put on alert. Residents outside of Geelong are advised to move to the refugee centres that are being set up. The location of your nearest safe location will be sent via the SMS emergency alert system.’ The anchorwoman looked to the side again and a slight, brown-haired woman walked up to her, sliding another paper in front of her. ‘Oh my …’ The anchorwoman paled visibly now, betraying her fear, although she covered it quickly with a thin veneer of professionalism. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a joke. We will be switching over to the emergency broadcast system shortly. Please remain calm and follow instructions as they are released.’ Her eyes drifted down to the paper in front of her. A shaking hand reaching toward the paper was the last image before the feed was cut off.

‘Georgie is headed to Kaniva,’ Sarah said softly, as everyone looked at her askance. ‘It’s halfway between here and Adelaide, with a tiny population. We always said we’d make that our meeting spot if anything happened.’

‘The alert said to stay put.’ Anica looked concerned but Sarah shook her head.

‘We can’t. I saw what it was in the hospital. If we stay here, we’ll die. We could maybe survive a week or so, but not forever. If we stay, we risk being stuck here completely, no way out.’ She tried to sound nonchalant. ‘Don’t worry, we’re ready for this.’ Sarah wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince her parents or herself.

A furious whispering drew her attention to where Rebecca and James sat, huddled together.

‘James? What’s wrong?’ Sarah asked.

It was Rebecca who looked up at her. ‘I have to find my family,’ she said, her voice quiet but strong.

‘Call them.’ Sarah handed the phone to her. ‘I’m sure the authorities have started quarantine procedures and set up the refugee centres. They might have received the same message we did and may already be safely tucked away somewhere. They wouldn’t want you to put yourself in danger if they were all fine.’

Rebecca didn’t look comforted by the words, but took the phone and dialled as she left the room for privacy.

Sarah pulled her mobile phone from her pocket, eyes widening at the string of alerts that already covered the home screen. Her f*******: feed had been flooded with concerned queries as to their safety, and asking what the hell was going on. Several of her American contacts were pressing her for details of the ‘zombie outbreak’ that had struck down half the continent and closed off the airports completely from the rest of the world. She frowned as she read them, wondering how she could have possibly been excited for the apocalypse she found herself in now.