Tankbread

by Paul Mannering

  ‘Well don’t just stand there, come on in.’

  I glanced back at the dark city and stepped through the door into a different world.

  CHAPTER 3

  The guards inside the opera house looked clean and polished too, as if the outside world didn’t exist. Maybe for them it didn’t. Everything I could see looked worn, but maintained. Surfaces were free of dust and nothing looked abandoned. They stared at the sawn-off shotgun on my hip. I kept my thumbs hooked on my belt, nice and easy.

  Some beavers had been busy in the house, tearing down anything unnecessary, replacing it with other things, the purpose of which made no sense to me. Like the pre-fab building with the two armed guards outside the door and the collection of potted plants huddled together like refugees from the end of the world.

  It was bright inside though, the place glowed with warm electric light. No sign of how they were generating the power and I felt exposed without shadows to slip into.

  ‘My name is Charlie Aston,’ the guy who invited me in didn’t extend a hand. I pretended I didn’t notice.

  ‘Nice to meet you Charlie. I like what you’ve done with the place.’ I’d never been so conscious of how badly I stank.

  Charlie gave a short, polite laugh. ‘Yes, we work very hard to maintain our sanctuary. Without this operation the entire area would collapse into complete chaos and lawlessness.’

  It was my turn to stare at him. Exactly what the fuck did he think was going on outside the barricades?

  ‘I have a message for the geeks,’ I said.

  ‘Of course, come with me, we will get you cleaned up and arrange an appointment.’

  I couldn’t see a reason to argue with an offer of a wash. I followed Charlie across the floor and into a narrow corridor stacked with cardboard boxes.

  ‘Baby food?’ I said reading a label as we passed.

  ‘Essential for early development during the transition to more complex foods.’

  ‘I ate a box of baby food once, a year or so back. Mostly fruit. Shit myself blind for a week afterwards. My crap stank like bananas and peaches.’

  Charlie didn’t laugh that time; I guessed my rough appearance and manner didn’t sit well with his happy world.

  We stopped at a bathroom, clean white tiles and actual working toilets. ‘Shower’s at the end. Towels are on the shelf. I’ll see if we can find you some fresh clothing.’

  I stood staring into the white room, waiting for the catch.

  ‘Back in a bit,’ Charlie said and walked off down the corridor. I watched

  him go and then stepped into the bathroom. When was the last time I took a proper shower? Not in a few years. Stripping off in the rain or taking a swim in the ocean was how we did it now.

  I stood under the shower with the heat turned all the way up. The drain ran black with filth and matted chunks of god-knows what. I used soap for the first time in recent memory. When I stepped out of the shower my clothes were gone and in their place were the green scrubs that doctors used to wear and some slipper-like shoes. I dried off and dressed, I wanted my gear back, I sure as hell wasn’t leaving this place with out it. My gun especially.

  Out in the corridor I turned and headed where I thought Charlie went. I passed a lot of doors, most of them locked. A few turns later the corridor ended in an unlocked door. In the room beyond were more boxes labelled as milk powder, baby food and medical stuff. Rubber tubing, gloves, antiseptic and swollen bags of saline stacked on shelves and floor under harsh fluorescent lights. I wound my way through the stacks and opened another door where I could hear an English sounding male voice and smell iodine.

  ‘Hello?’ I said, you announce yourself or you get shot in my world. Unless you are stealing stuff, then the less said the better.

  ‘Ah, hello,’ the English guy came into view, old enough to have white hair, his beard a choice, judging from it’s groomed state.

  The room was like an operating theatre, with big lights, a couple of tables, and benches in the background covered in bottles, tubes and computers winking away.

  ‘You a geek?’ I said.

  The old man laughed. ‘Why yes, I suppose I am. I am Doctor Haumann,’ he extended a hand and shook mine with a firm grip.

  ‘Got a message from Soo-Yong. The evol out past Roseville.’

  ‘Yes,’ the old man looked grave. ‘I know of him.’

  ‘He said to come here and get what you gave me and take it back to him.’

  ‘He said all that?’

  ‘Sure did.’

  ‘Did he say what it was that you should collect?’

  ‘Nope.’ I hoped it would be something lightweight, and exactly what Soo-Yong wanted. Turning up with something in the wrong colour or size would be a bad idea.

  ‘What do you know about the work we do here?’ Haumann said.

  I frowned and looked around; I didn’t feel any need to engage in question time. ‘Just give me the shit and I’ll be on my way. I need my clothes and gear back too.’

  Haumann carried on as if I had answered his question. ‘We are saving humanity. The risen dead are the single greatest threat to the existence of our species.’

  ‘True that,’ I said and idly wondered if he would notice if I walked out with some of the loose items in the room.

  ‘Sacrifices were made, but only to give us time you see. Time for a solution to be found! And we are close… so very close!’ Haumann gave a little fist pump.

  ‘Cool,’ I muttered and picked up a pair of chrome pliers with a spring handle. Might come in useful, except the green suit didn’t have any pockets.

  ‘Let me show you.’ Haumann opened a door on the right side of the room and the sound of pumps working and a deep humming came through the doorway. I followed him, wondering who I would have to talk to about getting something to eat.

  Stairs lead down into a massive chamber, pipes and cables ran everywhere, men and women in green jammies like mine moved around below us. They hunched over computer screens, and walked around rows of glass and metal water tanks, like cylindrical aquariums. We stopped on a mezzanine floor high above the busy workshop.

  ‘This is it’ Haumann announced. ‘This is where we start the process. Here we make what you suburb dwellers call Tankbread.’

  ‘I knew that,’ I said. It was hard not to be impressed. I could see rows and rows of tanks, most of them full of a murky pink liquid, like clouds at sunset or cum leaking from a virgin after her first time.

  ‘Did you now?’ Haumann seemed amused. ‘What is it that you know then young man?’

  ‘Geeks make Tankbread, evols eat Tankbread so the rest of us have a chance.’

  ‘Succinctly put,’ Haumann smiled. ‘Yes Tankbread appeases the dead, we give them what they want. With their limited intelligence they understand that we as a species are endangered. Therefore a viable alternative food supply must be maintained. Tankbread is that food supply.’

  ‘Good for the evols, not so good for those of us living up here,’ I had to get that in. Everyone on the outside hated and envied those who lived in the rumoured luxury of the Opera House. I wasn’t about to hold my tongue now I had a chance to bitch about the injustice of it all.

  ‘These tanks are used to grow the forms from zygotes to full sized specimens. The process takes about a month. Very energy intensive and highly complex. We are fortunate enough to have access to a nuclear reactor’s output. Without it things would get very grim, very grim indeed.’

  ‘Guess you haven’t been off the point in a long time then, huh Doc? Things are already grim, real fucking grim out there. Have been since day one.’

  Haumann had the decency to look regretful. ‘We do what we can young man, our resources are limited and sacrifices-’

  ‘Fuck your sacrifices! A lot of people lost every thing out there while you bastards-’

  ‘Is everything alright, Doctor Haumann?’ Charlie appeared behind us. He looked ready to throw me over the rail and onto the concrete floor below for speaking u
p against Haumann.

  ‘Yes, yes thank you Charlie. Our friend here was simply expressing an opinion. Perhaps it would be best if you took him to the canteen, see he has a good meal and perhaps some coffee. Would you like that? A cup of real coffee?’

  ‘Sure…’ what else could I say?

  The canteen was just that, a room full of chairs next to a kitchen, with a serving line. I followed Charlie’s lead and got a tray, and a plate. A sour looking woman with a headscarf ladled it full. The coffee urn was at the end of the server line. I inhaled roasted beans all the way to an empty table, ignoring the pricks that stopped eating to stare.

  I ate like I always do, quick, quiet and like this may be the last meal I see in a long time. I glanced up to see Charlie watching me with apparent amusement. ‘Want seconds?’

  I shook my head, patronising arseholes like Haumann and now Charlie treating me like some kind of animal. I did not need this shit. Let one of them walk out there, see how long they survived without their air-conditioned comfort, hot canteen food and fresh coffee.

  I watched the women in the canteen while I shovelled food into my mouth. Some were young, they looked fresh and clean as if they would smell great and feel even better up close.

  ‘You’ll be keen to get back on the road,’ Charlie said. A casual way of saying it was time for me to leave.

  ‘No rush,’ I said and stood up. Leaving my licked-clean tray on the table I walked over to where three girls were sitting together, chattering like birds in spring. ‘Hey,’ I said, sliding into an empty space next to a brunette with green eyes.

  ‘Hi,’ they said, looking a little surprised. They did smell good, fresh like cut apples, with just a hint of that secret girl musk.

  ‘How’s it going?’ said the blonde one, hair pulled back in a loose ponytail from her narrow face.

  ‘Not bad, so what do you ladies do around here?’ I said.

  Again they exchanged looks, a smirk moving between them like a ball being passed around. ‘Well,’ said the brunette, I work in administration. Mel,’ she indicated the blonde. ‘Is a nurse, and Lisa,’ the third one, dark hair, olive skin and large warm eyes. ‘Is with compound security.’

  It had been so long since I had an opportunity to be close to three women who weren’t waiting for me to lay enough in trade on the table for them to spread their legs, I realised that I didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘You from out there?’ Mel indicated the general direction of dead Sydney.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said and silence settled over us.

  ‘What’s it like?’ Lisa’s eyes were wide, and her lips parted slightly.

  ‘It’s… It’s death, and starving, and shitting yourself every time an evol looks at you and watching your swag and creeping around and wondering why the fuck you bother…’ I trailed off. My fists uncurled, they all looked a bit shocked.

  ‘I… we don’t hear much about it. We tend to stay inside the compound.’ Mel said looking like she was going to cry. I swallowed hard and lifted my gaze to watch the rise and fall of her breasts against the soft and clinging cotton of her shirt.

  ‘Haumann wants to see you,’ Charlie said. He stood at the end of the table looking pissed, the girls immediately pulled back and our moment passed like summer rain.

  ‘Sure. Ladies, nice to meet you,’ I stood up. ‘You done my laundry yet Charlie?’ Something in his jaw twitched. I held his gaze until he moved past. ‘Follow me.’

  Inside the Opera House very little space was wasted, crates and shelving were everywhere. We passed a giggling file of young women wrapped in towels, heading back to their dorm from the showers, and a file of men who weren’t laughing heading towards the showers. We went down two flights of cold concrete stairs until Charlie unlocked a solid looking door into another empty concrete space somewhere underneath the entertainment complex. The smell that wafted out was familiar; the stink of the walking dead. I stepped back. ‘What is this?’

  ‘What you came for,’ Charlie stepped through and held the door open. ‘Come on, Haumann wants you to see this. Wants you to understand what it’s all about.’

  ‘I don’t need to know.’

  ‘Sure you do. Once you know, you will do what we tell you.’

  I went through the door. The smell of evol was strong here. Once the door closed and my eyes adjusted to the dim light I could see more stairs leading down, and evols shuffling around somewhere below us, down there in the gloom.

  We headed down, feet quiet on the metal steps. Halfway down on a landing an armed guard stood waiting. ‘Hey Johno,’ Charlie greeted him.

  ‘Hi Charlie.’

  ‘This is a courier from the north side. It’s his first time inside.’ Johno nodded and seemed to relax slightly. ‘Well take him on down then.’

  At ground level, I could now see a fence. Panels of steel sheets welded against metal posts set in the concrete, large diamond shapes cut in to each panel. It gave the impression of a highly magnified wire-mesh fence. On the other side zombies, penned in and pacing up and down.

  ‘Christ, if the other evols heard about this they would not be happy,’ I said.

  Charlie gave a snort. ‘They’re dead. Who gives a fuck what they think?’ Above us, the door opened again and Haumann made his way down the stairs.

  ‘Well young man, has Charles explained everything to your satisfaction?’

  Charlie stepped forward. ‘I was just about to start, sir.’

  ‘Very well, carry on,’ Haumann put his hands behind his back and beamed at us.

  ‘Stop me if you’ve heard this one,’ Charlie had a practised tone like he gave this speech and tour every day. ‘We keep evols here for testing, we asses their development, the neural regeneration and retention of memory and cognitive function. We also test bio-weapons against them, anti-virals, genetically engineered toxins, and counter agents to the apoptosis inhibitor factors present in all evols cells.’

  ‘Does it work?’ I asked, pretending I understood any of what Charlie had just said.

  ‘Yes,’ Haumann said gravely. ‘But not fast enough and not with one-hundred percent effectiveness. We need a final solution to the evol menace. We need to destroy them, and inoculate humanity against future epidemics of the resurrection factor.’

  ‘So what’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘Soo-Yong is a well advanced evol. He died very suddenly, and unlike many evols he resurrected with little loss of neurological function. We believe that Soo-Yong died of natural causes, probably in his sleep. Those who die under great stress, and resurrect after infection by body fluid contact through injuries such as bite trauma, seem to have less cognitive retention. The returned dead in these cases are more aggressive, but have reduced mental functioning capacity.’

  ‘So?’ I yawned loudly. After the good food and the shower I was looking forward to a good long sleep. Preferably with Mel, Lisa and the brunette to keep me warm.

  ‘Tankbread is the most advanced bio-technology we have. The only thing that has saved us from utter extinction. Here we created thousands of cloned humans, a direct copy of adult males and females. These living bags of nutrients supply the evols needs.’ Haumann said and began to pace along the fence line. On the other side, the evols shuffled along beside him, moaning, and wheezing. ‘Come over here. Let me show you some computer models.’

  Charlie hung back by the fence. I didn’t give a damn about computer models, but that old lizard brain part of me, the bit that spoke up when danger threatened, was now saying give the old man some time to say his piece.

  Haumann tapped keys, clicked the mouse and made the screen show graphs, pages of text and other stuff that meant nothing to me.

  ‘There you see,’ He stabbed a gnarled finger at a red line on a graph, it was going down. I guessed that meant something turning to shit for someone.

  ‘Okay, what does it-?’ lizard brain started yelling. I spun around and saw the first of the evols stumbling through a gate on the fence that was swinging wide
open, a mob of them on his heels.

  ‘Motherfucker,’ summed it up pretty well I thought.

  The door at the top of the stairs slammed shut. Johno the guard was standing at his post halfway up the stairs, mouth gaping, looking like he’d been slapped. Charlie had vanished.

  ‘Get up the stairs Doc!’ I looked around. Other than Johno’s shotgun and my dick we were defenceless.

  ‘Johno! Shoot!’ I grabbed the Doc who was standing there, mouth working like a dying fish, and pushed him towards the stairs.

  ‘Johno! Shoot for fuck’s sake!’ evols are like those old world traffic signs. The ones that say walk don’t run. Evols don’t run. They don’t need to run. They don’t stop either, not for anything, except to eat living human flesh, and that’s why they are walking in the first place.

  Haumann found his voice. ‘My research! It is very important we don’t lose any data. Do not damage the test subjects!’

  Johno still hadn’t fired a shot. I was yelling at him to fuck some shit up, and he was looking from the zombies crossing the floor to Haumann. I was behind the doctor, closer to the open gate and felt like I was literally pushing shit up hill.

  ‘Move damnit! Get to the door! Get outta here!’

  Johno lead the way. He was whimpering, his gun forgotten as he headed up the stairs two at a time and fell on the door. Shaking it and hammering at the solid steel. ‘Open the door! For godsake! Open the door!’ he screamed.

  The dead reached the bottom of the stairs behind us and started up. One slow stumbling step at a time. One walking corpse behind the other, up they came. Haumann shrank back, his lips curling in a grimace of loathing. Johno was still screaming and pounding on the door. I grabbed his shotgun, fighting to get him to let go. A swift head butt stunned him and sealed the deal. Turning around I flicked the safety off and squeezed the trigger. The first evol’s head exploded in a stinking spray of grey-black ooze and bone fragments. I pumped the slide and fired again. Hot smoke filled the air between us and the worst way to die.

  The more screaming and panic, the more aggressive evols get. They started moaning and reaching, clawing at us, probably trying to get us to shut up. It is like being dead means suffering the worst headache imaginable. I cured one at point blank range, the shot tearing through the foul flesh and smashing the head behind him into pulp as well.