Life Goes On | Book 4 | If Not Us [Surviving The Evacuation] Tayell, Frank (classic books to read .TXT) 📖

what they had. When supplies ran low, they stopped sharing but they didn’t attack one another. Not until this incident with the thieves and the food supplies you found.”

“But we’re only getting the story of one group of survivors,” Tess said. “I better speak to them. They’re on Robben Island?”

“It’s the safest location. So far, five zombies have been found and neutralised on the island. Two sailing yachts were in the harbour. Seven corpses inland. Four were probably undead. No living survivors have yet been found, but even one person, alone, could deal with five zombies.”

“They’d have made themselves known by now if they were hiding,” Tess said. “Are there any food supplies on the island?”

“A little. Bulk basics. Rice and milk powder. I understand there is even a little coffee.”

“There is?”

Adams smiled. “I abused the full weight of my authority to demand two servings were set aside for you.”

“Don’t tell the doc,” Tess said. “How much food? How many meals?”

“Taken with what you found, and assuming that we can fish offshore using one of those yachts, enough for two weeks with our present numbers. But we hope those numbers will increase tomorrow.”

“So we’ve got to find more food,” Tess said.

“Or hope that the survivors have a surplus,” Adams said. “There is fuel on the island. Diesel for the ferries. A pipe links it to the mainland tanks. Robben Island will have electricity, and we have enough to return directly back to Perth.”

Tess rolled her fingers around the cup. “How much diesel did the African Union have?”

“Enough to reach Cape Town.”

“Four tankers, right?” Tess asked. “But if they’ve gone west, and are now driving around looking for lost relatives, at some point they’ll have used up so much, they can’t drive south. If we linger here too long, we’ll run out of food.”

“We’ll run out of aviation fuel first,” Adams said. “I can’t decide how long we can stay here until after tomorrow. After we’ve searched for more survivors and gathered a more complete picture of what happened here. We’ll use the rest of today to collect the ferry the survivors from the airport to the island. Tomorrow, at dawn, we’ll bury Pippa Sullivan.”

Before she went ashore, Tess went to find Zach. He wasn’t in his cabin, but on deck, at the very rear of the ship, watching the waves.

“Seen something interesting?” Tess asked.

“Sharks,” Zach said. “There really are sharks down there.”

“Big ones, too,” she said, peering down. “How are you doing?”

“Tired,” he said.

“Me, too. I’m sorry about Pippa.”

“I didn’t know her,” he said. “I mean, all the sailors knew her for longer. She was just fun, that’s all.”

She nodded. She understood. For the last month, he’d been surrounded by people twice his age. Finally, here, he’d found someone he could relate to as an equal rather than be treated as a mascot. Whether there was more to it, or whether it could have led to anything more, was moot.

“Doc Flo gave me more homework,” Zach said. “I mean, that’s weird, right? Someone dies, and she hands out homework.”

“She’s cursed with intelligence,” Tess said.

“What d’you mean?”

“She knows she is the smartest person on this ship, maybe even on this planet. Thus she feels like she should know exactly what everyone should do to stay alive, to win, to beat the zoms. As long as everyone does what she says, they’ll stay alive.”

“And when things go wrong it’s because we don’t listen,” he said.

“Nope, it’s because she overlooked something or didn’t explain it properly,” Tess said. “In that respect, she’s no different to anyone else, but she’d never believe you if you told her. No, she’s just like the rest of us, consumed by guilt and regret. But there’s nothing she could have done to stop the outbreak, and nothing we could have done to stop Pippa from being shot. The guilt lies entirely with that sniper. Those people could have shared the food, or fired a warning shot.”

“But if—” he began.

“Nope,” she said, cutting him off. “Whatever scenario you’re about to concoct, she still would have died. The sniper waited until we were inside the toy-store, and waited until he had a clear shot before pulling the trigger. Sullivan was always going to be put on guard by the door because she had the military training.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” he said.

“No. Only time will do that,” she said.

“She was going to open a library,” he said. “I was going to help her. We were going to make a fortune.”

“How do you make money from a library?” Tess asked.

“Because all the books are digital now, aren’t they, but they were all stored on giant computers in America and places. We were going to copy them from e-readers, and then print them out. Or loan out e-readers. We were still working on the details. Not just books, either. Movies. Music. Everything.”

“Neat idea. You knew a librarian, didn’t you? Ms Godwin?”

“Yeah, I’d go to the library after school. They stayed open late, and she let me stay later.”

“We certainly will need libraries,” Tess said. “I don’t know if we can spare the paper to print books out, or the electricity to charge up e-readers. If the copyright was held by a publisher in Manhattan, who gets paid now? It won’t be easy, but this sounds like a job for you and Ms Godwin to figure out.”

“She’s dead,” Zach said. “Hit-and-run last December. Only five people went to the funeral. They wouldn’t let me stay late in the library after that. Didn’t matter. Wasn’t like it was that cold at night.”

Tess nodded. She’d thought he might be running away from something, though it sounded as if he’d had nothing to run from. No family. No friends. No future. That was why he’d signed