If Not Us
Life Goes On 4
Surviving the Evacuation
Frank Tayell
Reading Order & Copyright
If not now, when? If not us, who?
Surviving the Evacuation: If Not Us
Life Goes On, Book 4
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
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
Book 17: There We Stood
Life Goes On 4: If Not Us
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Synopsis
If not us, who? If not now, when?
With the satellite networks down, searching for survivors is difficult. With the relief fleets destroyed, rescue is impossible. While the fallout is still settling, the collective minds of the refugees in Australia focus on rebuilding as a distraction from the rising risk of radiation and extinction.
Commissioner Tess Qwong has a different duty. She must find those responsible for this ultimate crime against humanity. Her investigation into the failed coup provides the identity of those behind the outbreak and the location of their lab.
With her misfit group of Special Forces and civilian conscripts, she heads to Mozambique. There, a New Zealand frigate will take them on into the unknown dangers of the Atlantic. But while they hunt the radioactive seas for the war criminals, below the waves their enemy is hunting for them.
From Perth to Panama, from South Africa to South America, from paradise islands to radioactive wastelands, the battle against extinction continues.
Table of Contents
The Investigation So Far
Part 1: Evacuation
14th March
Chapter 1 - While the Lights Are On
Chapter 2 - No Ball Games in the Garage
Chapter 3 - A New Parliament
Chapter 4 - Family Loyalties
15th March
Chapter 5 - The Taste of a Dollar
Chapter 6 - Out of the Fire, Into the Firing Line
Chapter 7 - Warriors
Chapter 8 - A Bridge Too Far
Chapter 9 - Almost Paradise
Chapter 10 - Waves of Death
16th March
Chapter 11 - Prayer for the Living
17th March
Chapter 12 - The Worst Workout
Part 2: A Copper Log
18th March
Chapter 13 - A Commissioner’s Diary
19th March
Chapter 14 - Daily Exercise
20th March
Chapter 15 - Radio Free England
21st March
Chapter 16 - Sherlock Holmes
Part 3: Forgotten Lessons from Not So Long Ago
22nd March
Chapter 17 - The Cape of Lost Hope
Chapter 18 - Too Old for Toys
Chapter 19 - Rooftop Safari
Chapter 20 - Nitro Express
Chapter 21 - Never Leave the Living With Regret
23rd March
Chapter 22 - At Sea, On Land
Chapter 23 - The Crazy Things We Do For Our Kids
Chapter 24 - News From Above
Part 4: The Point of No Return
24th March
Chapter 25 - Other Rooftops
Chapter 26 - The Courageous
26th March
Chapter 27 - Brace for Impact
27th March
Chapter 28 - Axe and Stone
28th March
Chapter 29 - An Old Type of New Sail
29th March
Chapter 30 - Simmer and Fizz
30th March
Chapter 31 - A Joke of a Ship
31st March
Chapter 32 - America
Part 5: Two Sisters, One Brother
1st April
Chapter 33 - Bienvenue à la Belle France
2nd April
Chapter 34 - Evidence at Sea
3rd April
Chapter 35 - Tomorrow’s Battle
4th April
Chapter 36 - A Desert Rose
Chapter 37 - Solar Panels Underground
Chapter 38 - Atropine for the Soul
5th April
Chapter 39 - Two out of Thirty Minutes
6th April
Chapter 40 - A Ship, a Plan, a Canal: Panama?
7th April
Chapter 41 - Pirates of the Caribbean
Chapter 42 - Catching a Shark
Chapter 43 - Pursue and Ye Shall Find
Chapter 44 - A Long Way From the Outback
Epilogue - Do You?
Part 1
Evacuation
Australia and Africa
The Investigation So Far
Canberra International Airport, Australia
Canberra’s first-class lounge echoed with a metallic, and occasionally wooden, clatter as four Australian conscripts opened travel-worn crates of AKM assault rifles: Clyde Brook, a soldier turned aid-worker; Teegan Toppley, a retired gunrunner still technically serving a four-year sentence; Bianca Clague, a former socialite who still wore her jewels; and Elaina Slater, a primary school teacher who’d volunteered as a soldier to keep her pupils safe.
“Even I know you shouldn’t store guns in sand,” Bianca said.
“These weren’t stored,” Teegan Toppley said. “They were hidden. Probably on a beach, with the location recorded on an X-marks-the-spot treasure map.”
“Oh, c’mon, Teegan,” Elaina said. “There’s only one time in history where X ever really marked the spot, and it wasn’t even in this hemisphere.”
Clyde picked up a rifle. “These should work after a quick clean, but if you’re keeping a tally of how many we’ve found, Elaina, wait until we’ve given them a test-f
ire.”
“Oh, no. I wasn’t writing that,” Elaina said. “I was making notes on everything that happened.”
“To whom?” Bianca asked.
“To everyone,” Elaina said. “We’re conscript-cops, aren’t we? Cops solve crimes. The zombies, the coup, the nuclear war, that’s the crime to end all crimes.”
“In my experience of human nature, there will never be an end to crime,” Toppley said. “It is an immutable law, and almost certainly one of Dr Dodson’s rules.”
“Fair dinkum,” Elaina said. “Let’s call this a war crime, and hope history will record it as the last in our lifetimes. I was never a big of a fan of mysteries, and this one is only half solved.”
“You’ve landed in the wrong job,” Bianca said.
“Better than being one of those conscripts sent by ship to America,” Elaina said. “The pilots on the plane which just landed said those ships lost power due to the EMP and are dead in the water out in the Pacific.”
“Not all of them, surely,” Bianca said.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Clyde said. “We’re here because we’ve all got to help each other, and the government decided conscription was the best way to get it done.”
“Not me,” Toppley said. “I’m here because Commissioner Qwong saved me from a short drop and a shallow grave. To think it took two weeks for society to collapse to the point where an oil refinery administrator decided to play Madame Guillotine.”
“I know,” Elaina said. “I can’t believe everything fell apart so quickly.”
“Oh, no, don’t misunderstand me,” Toppley said. “I’m shocked it took a whole two weeks. I should have been serving my sentence in Darwin, but a wrong turn by the wrong bus driver, and I was nearly hanged. The commissioner, and Dr Dodson, flew us to Brisbane just as it was hit by a tsunami. An hour earlier, we’d have drowned. Instead, we landed here, met you, and we all stopped the coup.”
“As much as that’s a cautionary lesson I’ll teach as soon as I get back in the classroom,” Elaina said, “your story can be summed up as a bureaucratic mix-up. Sorry, Teegan.”
“Ah, how the once-mighty have fallen,” Toppley said.
“We’re no different,” Elaina said. “There but for the slip of a pen, we could be aboard one of those conscript-ships. The satellites went down soon after the outbreak in Manhattan, and the internet didn’t last much longer. For three weeks, everyone’s been cut off from each other. Very little information is coming in, but I still want to know how it began, and how we know it’s over, and how was it linked to the zoms?”
“Before the outbreak, a plane landed in Broken Hill,” Bianca said. “Commissioner Qwong was a police inspector. Mick Dodson worked for the Flying Doctors, and Anna Dodson taught there, before she was elected to parliament. The plane is the key. It was a business jet, belonging to Lisa Kempton. Aboard was… oh, who was it? Ms Qwong said he was a carpet salesman, but he must have been a spy.”
“He sold carpets,” Clyde said. “The bloke’s name was Guinn. Don’t think the boss ever told me what his first name was. But he did just sell carpets. He was a trick, a trap, a feint, a dupe. Unimportant, except that his sister worked in the outback up by the dingo-fence. From what the sister told our boss, and what she told me, the point of sending this Guinn bloke down to Oz was to get the plane, and pilots, out of America.”
“But the cartel were waiting for the plane,” Bianca said.
“Exactly,” Elaina said. “They kidnapped the pilots, and tortured them. Do you think it was like in the bunker? Skinned alive?”
“That’s what the boss says,” Clyde said. “But she’s certain that it was the work of a different torturer.”
“So there’s more than one skin-peeler in Oz?” Elaina asked. “Well, that’s a piece of news that’ll keep me up at night! The Guinns flew north, on that plane, yes? All the way to Canada, and that’s how we knew a fight-back was underway up there. It’s how those scientists, Smilovitz and Avalon, ended up in Canberra. But what happened to the siblings next?”
“They’re still stuck in the frozen never-never,” Clyde said. “Word is, it wasn’t them who were supposed to be on the plane, but a squad of Special Forces.”
“Like you?” Bianca asked.
“I’m just an aid worker,” Clyde said.
“And I’m just a jewel thief,” Toppley said.
“I wish I was still a teacher,” Elaina said. “The plane went north, the commissioner and Dr Dodson came to Canberra to report in, and then… well, then we met Ms Qwong, and we found Senator Aaron Bryce’s body in the burbs a few hours later. Do you think Senator Bryce really committed suicide?”
“Probably, but maybe not,” Clyde said.
“Probably not, but maybe,” Toppley said.
“Surely he wouldn’t have,” Bianca said.
“That’s that cleared up then,” Elaina said. “He is, or he was, Sir Malcolm Baker’s son-in-law, right? And as a senator he worked with Anna Dodson in the cabinet.”
“After most of the politicians had been sent to Tasmania,” Bianca said. “Those who weren’t killed. The commissioner is sure some were murdered.”
“Right, making it easier for Erin Vaughn and Ian Lignatiev to seize power.”
“Those two’s families had been kidnapped,” Bianca said.
“Which is no excuse,” Elaina said. “Not for mass-murder and complicity in a nuclear war.”
“Oh, they can’t have known about that,” Bianca said.
“You hope they didn’t,” Elaina said. “But someone did. Vaughn and Lignatiev sent most of the politicians away from Canberra and killed the rest. They sent away most of the soldiers and police, too. Which is why it was Commissioner Qwong, and us, who were clearing the ruins.”
“Under orders of their lead mercenary, Kelly,” Clyde said. “I reckon Vaughn gave her a rank in the army so she could do what she wanted, go where she needed, deploy people how best it suited her. She gave the boss a particular assignment, a particular street to clear. But we got lost. If we hadn’t, I reckon we’d have walked into a trap.”
“So it was good luck we got lost and found Bryce’s body,” Bianca said.
“No, it was sheer chance we didn’t walk into an ambush,” Clyde said. “But if we hadn’t found that body, someone else would. Bryce was famous enough to be recognised. Either his death was staged to look like suicide so there’d be no investigation, or he killed himself there, knowing his body would be discovered by someone who wouldn’t cover it up. But my money is on him being murdered, and on Kelly being uncertain how much he’d told Ms Dodson. That’s why they decided to kill her next.”
“By locking Ms Dodson in with some zoms?” Bianca said.
“I think it was the cartel-killer, Kelly, who did that,” Clyde said.
“But Vaughn and Lignatiev share responsibility,” Elaina said. “We rescued Ms Dodson.”
“And Oswald Owen,” Bianca said.
“Well, I don’t trust him,” Elaina said, “even if he is the prime minister now. We tracked down Lignatiev, and then Kelly, and finally Vaughn. But not Sir Malcolm.”
“He’s a despicable man, always printing his lies and hate,” Clyde said. “He’s a grub who’ll have crawled into a deep, dark hole to hide. Let’s hope he died there.”
“Even if he didn’t, the coup’s over, isn’t it?” Bianca said.
“Is it?” Elaina asked. “I hope it is. I hope that the last bomb has been dropped and now we can rebuild, but I still don’t understand why it all happened. I suppose that’s what I’m trying to figure out.” She put the notepad down. “An outbreak in Manhattan. Planes spread the infection all over the world. Europe and North America collapsed in days, and few places last much longer. Australia nearly collapsed. Then came the bombs, and the tsunami which wiped out the east coast and most of the Pacific Islands. New Zealand, Australia, Papua, and a few other islands, we’re all that’s left with however many refugees made it here before the collapse. Sixty million?
Eighty? Even if it’s a hundred million, there were seven billion three weeks ago.”
“Some of them will still be alive,” Clyde said, picking up the crowbar. “And so are we, so open the rest of the crates and let’s see what we can salvage.”
14th March
Chapter 1 - While the Lights Are On
Australia National University, Canberra, Australia
“You have a week to find Sir Malcolm Baker, Tess,” Anna Dodson said. “If you can’t, someone else will take over the investigation while you accompany the scientists to Britain and New York. We must stop the cartel. I hate to think what kind of new world people like that would create. But if we don’t stop the undead, none of us will have any kind of future.”
“The parliamentary session will be broadcast at six p.m.? Then I’ve time to grab some sleep first,” Tess Qwong said. She stood, stiffly, wincing from the exertion of the night’s hunt for last of the traitorous conspirators and the previous day’s battle to stop the attempted coup. As she rested a hand on the back of the chair, the room dimmed. The lights had gone out. The fan had stopped humming. Outside, Anna’s RSAS bodyguards had both raised their weapons, while in the corridor, people had stopped, turning to one another in baffled confusion.
Her weary limbs, bruised muscles, and cut skin forgotten, Tess quick-stepped to the light switch on the wall. She flicked it once, twice, and a third time in desperate hope, but the lights wouldn’t turn on.
“Stay here, Anna,” she said, opening the door. “You two, protect the—”
But before she could finish, the lights flickered back to life.
“Just a power surge, Tess,” Anna said, her words edged with desperate relief. “We’ll be jumping at shadows next.”
“These days, the shadows jump back,” Tess said. “I’ll see you this evening.” She nodded to the two soldiers, and hurried past the academics and conscripts busily converting the School of Medical Sciences into a fortified pharmaceutical lab, but paused when she saw the Canadian scientist, Leo Smilovitz. He’d donned a lab coat, though beneath it he wore a tool belt with a handgun in a holster designed for a power drill, a dosimeter dangling next to a flashlight, and a rock-hammer looped between the screwdrivers.